ASIAN AMERICAN
PERSONALITIES
MORNING GLORY
PAGE 2 of 7
On MAKING IT
My career depends on whether I'm covering the kind of story that will sell, and that is based on shock value. Management, our executive producer and the managing editor, determine what stories will lead the show. And that decision is based on a number of issues, but mainly shock value. For example, another bus is bombed in Jerusalem today and that will make lead news. It depends on how that news affects people in the community. We're very selective about covering crime stories, for example. We don't cover every drive-by shooting. Instead we cover the ones that elicit the most shock-value. If a baby were involved, it would elicit emotion, and [rating] numbers show most people watch news because of emotional drama. When you elicit emotional reaction, that's when you get the most viewership. That's how they determine what we show.
As a reporter, we have no say on how a story rates in the broadcast. That's up to the executive producer. We keep ratings monitored overnight which tells us how many people stay tuned during the hour. We select stories based on that. The management may look at, for example, that at ten o'clock we got a major rating. Then suddenly at 10:15, rating starts to slide. They analyze the reason, and coordinate our program.
For example, the OJ Simpson trial carried on for a year! We wouldn't have put it on every single day if people didn't want to see it. The story is a product, and the law of supply and demand rules. We wouldn't be doing it for its own sake.
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"We don't cover every drive-by shooting. Instead we cover the ones that elicit the most shock-value."
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