Tape at 11 -- But Not Much Tape

Maybe it was like hunting a baited field. Afterall, it's easy to predict that local television news won't cover local politics. Politics is too hard. Car chases and house fires are easy.

So it should come as no surprise that researchers watching local news found big city, local television news spent 8 times as much air time on car crashes than covering local election campaigns -- including federal races -- in the weeks before the 2004 elections. The study analyzed 4,000 local newscasts from 11 major markets. Some of the findings:

• Seattle: Time spent on intro music and teases outnumbered time covering the Washington Governors race by 14-to-1
• Nationwide: Paid advertising by candidates in news programs outdid local coverage of those races by 5-to-1
• Nationwide: More than 50% of local newscasts carried a story on the Presidential race but only 8% carried a story on a local race
  

Sen John McCain is using the study to bolster his call for tighter controls on media ownership. Critics of allowing companies to buy up more stations claim big companies make less of a commitment to the local communities where their stations are actually located.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Seaton Hall University and led by the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. (NYT -- Thanks to Al's Morning Meeting)