Salzman: Ad creep on local newscasts rankles

Linking ads with news, sports reports a troubling trend that smacks of greed

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Throughout the sports segment on its 10 p.m. broadcast, Denver's 7 now runs the logo of an advertiser in the lower left corner of the screen.

This week it's the Lodge Casino.

The Lodge Casino logo is a bit larger than the Denver's 7 logo on the other side of the screen, perhaps making sleepy viewers believe they've accidentally tuned to the Lodge Casino station, not their beloved Denver's 7.

None of the other Denver stations do this on their late-night broadcasts - though some stations nationally have corporate sponsors for their helicopter, Doppler radar, or the entire sports and weather segments, according to Wally Dean of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

He wouldn't be surprised if other stations run ads like Denver's 7, but he and other experts I interviewed haven't seen it.

"While not on its face unethical, it is a troubling encroachment of advertising messages into real estate previously reserved for pure information," Jill Geisler of the Poynter Institute e-mailed me Monday. "Ads have traditionally appeared adjacent to news content, so they were clearly separate."

Patti Dennis, vice president of news at 9News, said she would "fight very hard" against running commercials "inside the content-portion of the newscast," pointing out, among other things, that this could create problems if a story about the onscreen advertiser arose.

The more closely ads and news are mixed, the more it appears that the news is influenced by advertisers.

What's next? Will the local TV news screen become pockmarked with corporate logos?

And why is Denver's 7 doing this, anyway? Calls to Denver's 7 management were not returned, but the station does not appear to be in financial straits.

McGraw-Hill Broadcasting makes about $8 million annually from Denver's 7's 10 p.m. broadcast alone, according to the latest data I could find, an October 2004 column by Rocky Mountain News broadcast critic Dusty Saunders.

Profit margins for the local TV news business are 40 percent to 50 percent in top markets like Denver, according to Dean.

So, the ad creep looks like nothing more than greed - or, more charitably, another example of an overreaction to stockholders' demands for unreasonable profit from media companies.

Against this backdrop, the content of local TV news continues to disappoint.

A March study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism slammed local TV news nationally, reporting that about half of the news segment (apart from weather, sports, etc.) is dedicated to crime and accidents - though Denver's stations are probably somewhat better than the national average.

Don't blame the local TV journalists you see on air for this. They're just the working stiffs.

I think Stephanie Riggs, who's leaving Denver's CBS 4 after 12 years in May, speaks for many TV journalists when she told the News on April 22 that she's liked her job most when she gave "people a voice who wouldn't have had one."

Most TV journalists want to be journalists, not giddy or morbid entertainers. Profit-crazed execs get in their way, I think.

Talk to me. How can a journalist demand that politicians be held accountable and then refuse to go on talk radio to answer questions about his or her own work?

"I don't need to be accountable to them (talk-radio hosts)," said Denver Post columnist Cindy Rodriguez, who recently turned down invitations to be on KOA 850's Mike Rosen's and KKZN 760's Jay Marvin's talk radio shows. "I need to be accountable to my readers."

Rodriguez says she answers almost all her e-mail.

"Talk-show hosts are not doing journalism," she continued. "It's not my job to help them fill their air time. If it were a balanced public forum, that would be totally different."

Rodriguez adds that she's "not good on live TV or radio," and she finds talk radio "repetitive and tedious."

I don't think talk radio is journalism either, but when Rosen announces that a reporter refuses to be on his show, it makes the profession of journalism look bad.

So for the sake of dialogue and accountability, journalists should defend their work on talk radio or anywhere, time permitting. If they're shy, they should ask their editors to spring for some interview training.

Rosen thinks some print journalists who refuse to be on his show view talk radio as beneath them. "In addition to being a talk-show host, I've been writing columns for 25 years, and I'm a lot better writer than most print journalists I've observed," Rosen e-mailed me. "I'm also smarter and have a far more impressive résumé. I chuckle when they affect condescension."

OK, maybe you wouldn't want to talk to this guy either. But for journalists, it's part of the job.

No response from me? If you've e-mailed me during the past month or so, and I did not respond, please resend your message. My News e-mail wasn't working.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.