Discovering "Joe Six Pack" content in television news: the hidden history of audience research,...

The recent opening of the papers and records of the McHugh & Hoffman news consulting organization is an opportunity to better understand content priorities in local television news. Local newscasting is criticized for a plague that Klite (1995) has termed "tabloidosis." The literature has

Yet, seldom considered is the first part of this familiar syllogism. If degraded standards do mean news to most Americans, why is this true? It may be because standards are relative and differ between differing groups of people. A key juncture in the history of local TV news came when the first news consultancy, McHugh & Hoffman, introduced audience research in newsrooms. After decades of proprietary secrecies, works by Allen (2001) and Berkowitz, Allen, and Beeson (1996) were the first to publish examples of audience research that consultants had used in newsrooms. Apparent was the influence of focus groups and field surveys in the news "gatekeeping" process. For decades, viewers had "voted" on news subjects. The most popular content had set news agendas.

But also noted, and left for further study, had been two additional discoveries. Not only had the consultants' research been steeped in social class analysis. Those who had brought this to TV news had not been amateurs but "Chicago School" sociologists headed by famed theorist Lloyd Warner. To learn about TV news, they had drawn viewers from random samples that reflected the total population. Their purpose was to have each viewer define "good" journalism. Results came from the upper and upper-middle class--as well as from the lower-middle and lower class. What media authors have known as the "lowest common denominator," the sociologists had known as the bottom groups. That they had been included may suggest an explanation more penetrating than ratings for the lowest common denominator content many observe. The bottom groups had comprised two thirds of American society. When the research concluded, it is highly likely that the lowest common denominator would have comprised most of the sample.

The possibility that TV news reflects not ratings but the composition of society nevertheless remains loosely proposed. Still unexposed are the McHugh & Hoffman materials that are said to demonstrate class analysis. Peale and Harmon (1991) and Meehan (1990) discussed audience research as a mechanism that promotes, in Meehan's words, "the forced choice behaviors of the mass of television viewers" (p. 118). Whereas Kaniss (1991) further documented newsworkers' orientation to a "less educated and less affluent mass audience" (p. 103), and Speer (2000) confirmed a "mentality" that "your audience is Joe and Martha Sixpack" (p. 12), rarely have media authors approached either the theory from which their labels and terms are derived, or why, with the advent of audience research, "mass audience" standards did emerge.

What follows through further use of the McHugh & Hoffman sources is a historical account of the genesis of "science" in TV news selection. It covers the period between 1962 and 1971, when sociologists from the University of Chicago as a commercial pursuit established McHugh & Hoffman. Their ideas then contributed to a turning point in "downmarket" journalism called "Eyewitness News." The account suggests that TV news has vital roots in the field of sociology. The sociologists had been baffled that broadcasters felt they were providing public service with newscasts that appealed only to the 25% of viewers with college degrees. They had questioned extensive coverage of government and politics. The research had shown that newsrooms should get out of government halls and into the domains where majority viewers had lived. Seen through history are several matters worthy of contemporary discussion. Among these is the claim, exhorted by the sociologists, that TV news cannot satisfy "one" American public. Another is the claim that sealed broadcasters' acceptance of class theory, that by fitting news to the largest groups both profits and public service are achieved.

Background

News consultants are the main providers of the audience research and outside counsel that many broadcasters deem essential in maximizing the profits of newscasts. Hired by managers, consultants implement strategies inside newsrooms during interactions with news directors, producers, editors, and reporters. Although much of the public's news comes from consulted newscasts, rarely is the consulting process, which broadcasters deem a "trade secret," publicly disclosed. News consulting peaked around 1990, when three fourths of the 800 news-active local stations had consulting contracts (Butler, 1988). More recently, as the formation of large station groups brought greater in-house research and advising, outside news consulting became less widespread. Yet, several hundred stations remained joined to one of many nationally based consulting firms (Guensberg, 2000). The largest was Frank N. Magid Associates, which entered news in 1970 and recently consulted in 150 newsrooms (Magid & Associates, 2003).

The first of these firms was McHugh & Hoffman. It was founded in 1962 by former ad executives Philip McHugh and Peter Hoffman. At its peak in 1985, McHugh & Hoffman consulted in around 100 newsrooms. In 1999, McHugh & Hoffman was reorganized as Convergent Communication. Its materials became the property of former McHugh & Hoffman president John E. Bowen, who opened them to scholars the following year.

This firm is considered significant in the development of local television news for events around 1970, when it teamed with ABC local news innovator Al Primo in a maligned yet path-clearing newscast concept called "Eyewitness News." Much literature traces the spread of news consultants to the high ratings this concept achieved. Study was propelled by period authors, including Barrett (1975, pp. 89-112), Diamond (1975, pp. 87-109), and notably Powers, in his 1977 The Newscasters (pp. 66-77), who speculated that a "blueprint" devised by consultants lowered newscasts to same "mass" audiences as popular entertainment shows. Led by Walter Cronkite, Eric Severeid, and other eminent figures, critics assailed "Eyewitless News" for its "happy talk," "reporter involvement," and "action" visualization (Murray, 1990, pp. 386-387). A theme in subsequent studies was the acceptance of these "gimmicks" as standard newscasting techniques (Kaniss, 1991, pp. 102-113; McManus, 1994, pp. 57-84; Robinson & Levy, 1986, pp. 216-217).

Two questions have attracted scholars. First, did news consultants influence news content? McHugh & Hoffman denied editorial influence. However, content studies had shown that "gatekeepers" at consulted stations had deemphasized government and politics in favor of weather, crime, human interest, and problem-solving topics known as "news you can use" (Hardman, 1990; Maier, 1986; Peale & Harmon, 1991). Clear evidence came when scholars first examined the McHugh & Hoffman documents. Allen (2001, pp. 207-225) and Berkowitz et al. (1996, pp. 449-450) wrote of a "socialization" of newsworkers to years of focus groups and field surveys in which news content was tested. Gatekeepers learned to select topics most appealing to viewers.

Less resolved has been the second question: Were content influences decided by the same priorities that had led consultants to a mass audience? Little research in mass communication relates class divisions. The McHugh & Hoffman research is important for, as Allen (2001, pp. 41-51) has shown, it had been conducted by an applied research institute at the University of Chicago called Social Research, Inc. (SRI). Its Ph.D. directors had been students of social researcher Lloyd Warner, who had founded SRI in 1946 and whose volume of scholarly work in the 1930s was the first to document an American class system. News consulting began when Warner had encouraged McHugh and Hoffman to join SRI as "consultants" whose job was to sell research to broadcasters. Four sociologists conducted the first TV news research. They were Sidney Levy, later the head of sociology at Northwestern; Ira Glick, later a chair in sociology at Chicago; Lee Rainwater, later a professor of sociology at Harvard; and Richard Coleman, who later headed the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard and MIT.

Much literature in sociology, marketing, and the applied social sciences recognizes Warner and SRI. Under Warner, SRI became the first center of modern market research (Packard, 1957). Until its dissolution shortly after Warner's death in 1970, SRI had thrived during a post-World War II "organizational revolution" in which production and marketing were changed by SRI's inventions of the focus group and the "brand image" concept (Easton, 2001; Karesh, 1995). SRI also had pioneered demographic analysis. This had led from class analysis. As Coleman (1983) related: "The class concept won entry into the marketing discipline when the proposition that consumer motivations varied consistently by social class was set forth in the 1950s by 'the Chicago group'" (p. 269).

Familiar in sociology is the model Warner had proposed. In the first volume of his "Yankee City" series, Warner had established a division of Americans into six classes (Warner & Lunt, 1941). Two "aristocratic" upper classes comprised 2% of Americans. Next was a third elite group, the upper-middle class. It consisted of the then 12% of Americans who had finished college and who had salaried professional positions and above-average incomes. Below the upper-middle class and twice its size was the lower-middle class, comprised of those with some post-high school education, white collar or skilled blue collar jobs, and average incomes. The largest group was the upper-lower class. It consisted of the 42% of Americans who had no more than high school educations, average to lower incomes, and unskilled jobs. At the bottom and estimated at 12% was the chronically poor and mostly undereducated lower-lower class.

Warner pictured this model in diamond-shaped diagrams which emphasized the substantial size and likeness of the lower-middle and upper-lower classes. This diamond diagram later would appear in most McHugh & Hoffman consulting reports. Figure 1, taken from a 1965 document entitled Essential Findings and Recommendations for WCBS-TV, discussed later, is an example of what station managers and news directors had seen.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Sociologists Pfautz and Duncan (1950), who rejected the model's generalizations, opened a body of literature questioning Warner's work. Yet, Warner's acclaim grew from his revival of class study after it had faded from disinterest in the wealth-and-power theory of Karl Marx. Warner's six classes were people equal in esteem and who shared characteristics that reflected behavior. This thinking inspired a "Chicago School" of social research that peaked in the 1960s but which, against newer models and renewed disinterest in the value of class, declined in the 1980s. Yet, studies had continued. Table 1 compares more-recent class size estimates of Rossides (1990), Kerbo (1991), and Beeghley (1996) with those of Warner (Warner & Lunt, 1941). Sociologists note an enlargement of the upper-middle class to upwards of 25%. They also discuss what Lemel and Noll (2002, pp. 386-405, 424-428) observed as the system's "remarkable stability." This can be seen in the largest class, the upper-lower class. It was estimated at 40% of Americans in the 1990s. This was the same proportion Warner had reported in the 1930s.

The basis of SRI's commercial research had been Warner's procedure for designating social class. Researchers had probed for personal criteria, usually income, education, occupation, and living condition. An index enabled the class marking of every individual. In some studies, such as those that assisted SRl's largest client, General Motors, in redesigning the Cadillac, subjects had been limited to those of high status. Differently, in studies of universally used items, such as television news, samples were drawn in proportion to the full population. Thus, studies of TV news had required three times as many lower-middle and upper-lower subjects as upper and upper-middle subjects. An index used by McHugh & Hoffman (1983) in television news research through the 1990s appears in Table 2.

The sociologists assigned to McHugh & Hoffman--Glick, Levy, Rainwater, and Coleman--did not write about television in their later published works. Although this was because their areas were class behavior, applied sociology, and urban studies, another reason was given by Coleman in a "last lecture" speech in 1995 as an emeritus professor at Kansas State University. He said he did not savor having other scholars know of his work in local TV news. Eventually detesting the "Eyewitness News" concept, Coleman (1995) developed "a massive disinterest in most of what the average viewer is entranced with on television" (p. 1).

Yet, bounding in Chicago School study had been that concept's rationale. By 1960, sociologists were writing of television as a class-conflicted medium. It had become a center of life for those both in the lower-middle and upper-lower classes, groupings Warner had labeled together as the "middle majority." However, television's "high brow" audience--comprised almost entirely of the upper-middle class--was small in size and often unwilling to accurately estimate their television use (Gardner, 1960, pp. 23-25). Rainwater (1959, pp. 26-41) highlighted the prosaic and localized lifestyles of the working class families who were drawn to TV. Warner associates Horton and Wohl (1956) expanded on the attraction of TV to the working classes. They showed that lower strata viewers formed vicarious "friendships" with television performers. The one book in sociology devoted to television has remained Glick and Levy's (1962) Living With Television. By the time this book was published, Glick and Levy had moved from the University of Chicago to SRI and had become SRI directors. Notable were their findings on television news. Although upper-middle individuals had "embraced" the current events genre, lower-middle and upper-lower individuals had "accommodated" or "protested" it (pp. 134-135). Toward every other genre except drama, perceptions by class were reversed (p. 112).

The SRI sociologists also had been aware that although upper Americans had high levels of political participation and interest, and held "a proportion of [offices] far out of keeping with their representation in the general population," lower-middle individuals had fewer and upper-lower individuals often negligible opportunities in politics and government (Warner & Lunt, 1941, pp. 366-373). Upper-middle interests were ordered by members' possession of sophisticated educational credentials, whereas lower-middle and upper-lower individuals "had a high-school education." Although "many have had some additional special training," lower-middle and upper-lower Americans "seldom make basic decisions about their work" (Kahl, 1957, p. 203). For news and information, the latter groups had been observed "relying on kin for tips on jobs, soliciting advice from them on purchases, and counting on them in times of trouble" (Coleman, 1983, p. 270). This is "only one sign of how much more limited--and how different--working class horizons are socially, psychologically, and geographically.... In almost every respect, a parochial view characterizes this blue-collar world" (Coleman, 1983, p. 270).

Finally, the sociologists had been impressed that a</p> <pre> lack of understanding or even sensitivity toward the working class

is strikingly clear in mass communications.... [Those] with their

higher levels of education and their more sophisticated tastes look

down on many of the mass communications, we find, are so important

to the working class. (Gardner, 1959, p. xii) </pre> <p>Social Research and News Class Conflict, 1962-1966

The McHugh & Hoffman collection is housed in Bethesda, Maryland, and is owned and curated by former McHugh & Hoffman chair John E. Bowen. (1) The firm's major activity had been the presentation of 200- to 300-page research-consulting reports. Each year each client had received one of these documents. Selected for review were the first two annual reports for each of the firm's 10 original clients. These had dated between 1962 and 1965. As these materials had indicated more energetic activity among clients in the very largest markets, most of the reports for clients in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit through 1970 also were selected. Roughly 50 reports, accompanying correspondence, and concept statements were examined. Examination of the reports concentrated on sections that had contained findings and recommendations. Less extensively examined were sections on newscaster analysis and market conditions.

The materials affirm that news consultants were attentive to news content. While assuring professionals that news content was immutable and fixed by the day's events, consultants had seized on news content as a viewing variable. Unmistakable was use of the Warner class model. Yet, as much as they reveal the "science" that occurred, the materials tell of a sequence of events, many stirred by McHugh & Hoffman owner Phil McHugh, from which can be seen the foreclosure of a class "mentality" in newsrooms.

The story behind this had precipitated from the low news ratings of 10 local stations, the 5 owned by CBS and the 5 that comprised Storer Broadcasting. In 1962, each group had hired the new McHugh & Hoffman firm. When word of these contracts reached SRI, Glick was assigned to a television unit dedicated to McHugh & Hoffman. The team soon would include Levy, Rainwater, and Coleman. Meeting the sociologists for the first time, Storer vice president Bill Michaels (1962) expounded to Glick that "our problem is considerably different from that of an advertiser or producer who specializes in the hope of reaping a profit on a [product's] direct sale." Glick told McHugh that Michaels's problem--the low ratings--easily might be solved.

Glick's judgment lay in the book Living With Television, in which he and Levy had distinguished TV news by its upper-middle class attraction (Glick & Levy, 1962). They had not been surprised. They had noted the seriousness of 1962 newscasts. They also had noted the program's unique organization. Most TV programs had continuous plots. Newscasts were a first-to-last progression of items in which newscasters sat before cameras and read written scripts. Serious news and the "medium of record" structure fit the upper-middle class. Apparent was form borrowed from newspapers, which this group preferred for news. It was because of the same characteristics that Glick and Levy had been satisfied with that second result, that TV news was not embraced by that group called the middle majority. Serious newscasting impeded the TV friendships its members sought. Fact-laden media were not those this group had been known to use. Warner's first work had included a chapter on levels of media substance. He had used the media industry, and its hierarchy of elite, average, and tabloid newspapers, to illustrate the class system that, in that work, he had proposed (Warner & Lunt, 1941, pp. 378-419).

Because elite appeal had seemed the choice of the TV industry, Glick and Levy's (1962) finding that "the average viewer is able to talk at length about television without mentioning news programs" had not seemed significant (pp. 134-135). But now that they were part of the industry, their task an answer for low ratings, they knew this finding was profound. Glick asked McHugh and Hoffman if ratings in fact were important, for, if so, research must concentrate not on favored viewers but on the 70% for whom TV news did not register. Ratings were important, Hoffman (1962) replied: The "main thing we are after," Hoffman told Glick, "is to understand why the [disinterested] viewer acts the way he does so that we can take appropriate measures."

By mid-1963, SRI had presented annual field surveys of each of the 10 cities with CBS and Storer stations. Each survey used the Chicago School method of open-ended "qualitative" inquiry. Questions had focused on newscasters, seemingly the most likely source of middle majority indifference. SRI had theorized that TV viewing rested on performers. The research confirmed that, despite the serious nature of news, certain newscasters had the potential for bonding with middle majority viewers. A goal of all future consulting was finding these personalities. However, a second dimension, news content, began to emerge when it was learned that viewers' perceptions of "good" and "bad" newscasters were intertwined with the news that each newscaster presented. Attention drew to two findings: first, that viewers were averse to newscasters' excessive talk of government and civic affairs, and second, that upon hearing from a newscaster that the world was safe, their remaining viewing motive often was only to hear what the weathercaster had to say.

Ideas had led from Rainwater's study for WBBM in Chicago, SRI's home city and one it thought was a "hard" news locale. This appeared an upper-middle class perception. Lower-middle and upper-lower subjects had said their attention had waned the more newscasters talked about meetings and decisions at city hall. They volunteered that if they were the newscasters, they would talk about crime and decay, dropout problems, and personal issues such as birth control (WBBM-McHugh & Hoffman, 1963, p. 125). These viewers' interest in weather was shown in their inordinate liking of weathercasters and in their accounts of how they had used a weathercaster's information in planning daily events. Even in Los Angeles, where changing weather was rare, weather was a viewing motivation. In Glick's study for KNXT (KNXT-McHugh & Hoffman, 1963, pp. 84-90), lower-middle and upper-lower viewers said they were more familiar with the city's weathercasters than with any of its regular newscasters.

No sooner had these data been presented than had concerns about ratings intensified. In September 1963, local and network newscasts expanded from 15 to 30 min. Fearing that viewers would not watch half-hour newscasts, the clients had asked for content direction. Overloaded with corporate projects, SRI declined McHugh & Hoffman's request for immediate studies of half-hour news viewing. McHugh & Hoffman stepped forward. Until then a sales service for SRI, the consultants for the first time assumed a consulting role. McHugh (1963) devised a "business plan" that was innovative in its calls for news videographers and news directors without on-air duties. The consultants then crisscrossed the country to bring clients information on different cities' new half-hour shows. Finally, McHugh went back to SRI. He persuaded SRI to add some TV news items to corporate projects that had been scheduled for that November.

A small study generated by this work in November 1963, as Allen (2001, pp. 63-65) has described, would catalyze many of the TV news revisions later seen in "Eyewitness News." SRI had been in the field during television's coverage of the Kennedy assassination (McHugh & Hoffman, 1964, pp. 77-87). Viewers had related a "different" television news in two ways. They had been captivated by the human interest content, and they had been drawn into the story by the willingness of newscasters to communicate as "real people."

The sociologists, though, had noticed a third finding: that viewers had keyed the coverage to its visualization. The "Yankee City" series had distinguished less-educated individuals by their preference for pictorial content, presumably to aid comprehension. But the large number of viewers who in 1963 had said "seeing is believing" suggested a journalistic effect. SRI concluded that only through the visuals had viewers been convinced the tragedy had occurred. This idea galvanized content influence by news consultants. Pictures had completed the puzzle of why regular newscasts, with a "medium of record" newspaper structure, had repelled average viewers. Without pictorial content, they did not trust TV news. McHugh & Hoffman soon advised that content without pictures should not be presented. As SRI sociologist Earl Kahn later told news directors: "The bias described was not of a political orientation" but "one of 'not showing all the facts.'" Accordingly, "with film and tape visually supporting the reporters' statements ... the issue of bias is not raised" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1977, pp. 22-23).

Returning to the field in 1964, the sociologists added to their studies an analysis called "Attitudes Toward Newscast Elements." It was the forerunner of quantitative news content preference research, the means by which viewers would "vote" on content agendas. The 1964 Detroit study had noted strong audience interest in weather and local news and less, yet sizable, interest in features, sports, editorials, and entertainment news (WJBK-McHugh & Hoffman, 1964, pp. 3-5). However, the qualitative method then used had limited this analysis to open-ended remarks. Not until the 1970s were viewers presented with lists of content items and asked to voice approval or rejection. An example of what broadcasters later would read appears in Table 3, a topology also from Detroit compiled in the 1990s (WDIV-McHugh & Hoffman, 1996, pp. 125-138). It was selected because it appeared in the McHugh & Hoffman collection with earlier materials from Detroit, which the firm had studied continuously since 1962, and was appropriate for showing class-news differences.

Table 3 summarizes much of what had been discussed when "element" analysis began. From weather and human interest to crime and "news you can use," the later statistics had depicted not merely total audience preference. They illustrated the extent to which the upper-lower class, by virtue of its 40% representation, influenced that which newsrooms were told was the public's most-preferred news. The upper-middle class had favored public affairs and government. Yet, because less approving upper-lower subjects had weighted research samples, public affairs and government were far down the list.

If less exacting, the 1960s findings had been more compelling. This was because through 1967, when McHugh & Hoffman affirmed as much in a TV news "trends" report, viewers had seen few newscast innovations since the half-hour expansions 4 years before. This "reflects an unwillingness or inability to accept the movement of television news programs out of their traditional mold associated with newspapers and magazines," the report stated (McHugh & Hoffman, 1967, p. 46). Viewers said they appreciated weather because, in their words, it was "news you can use." Their accounts of other news content, which still bore their perception that content and newscasters were the same, reflected discomfort. They related that newscasters often were "above their heads," "conceited," and "act[ing] as if they were doing ... a favor in giving ... the news" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1964, pp. 72-73). The 1967 report had recommended against further news expansions because of a perception of "long, boring, repetitive and trivial" information (pp. 12, 46-56).

Most affected by these findings had been McHugh. He believed that stations agreed that higher ratings depended on "more palatable" working class news (WJBK-McHugh & Hoffman, 1966, p. 2). Yet, he sensed that from fears of what might be said "at the country club," the managers were refusing to act. In July 1965, SRI researchers entered Los Angeles, where, that year, client KNXT did enact recommendations for cameras and visualization. Although upper-middle subjects had approved, and had mentioned extensive film coverage of Mayor Sam Yorty and decision makers at the Civic Center and in color, middle majority subjects who largely did not have color TVs had wanted the cameras out on the streets and in their neighborhoods. This study was conducted 1 month before the Watts riots. The violence had caught government officials but not those in neighborhoods by surprise. Viewers had told SRI of an unmet need not only for exposure of crime they had feared and urban decline they had seen. "The dramatic escalation of the Vietnam conflict [is an] immediate issue. With the concomitant increases in draft quotas and the growing causality list," if not 1965 government officials, "the people are suddenly aware of its portents" (KNXT-McHugh & Hoffman, 1965, p. 56).

Speaking before the International Radio and Television Society (IRTS) 10 years later, McHugh (1975) recalled the aftermath of the KNXT study in 1965 as a personal turning point. After witnessing in newsrooms "the--atrophy the world has ever known," the remainder of his career, which continued until close to his death in 1993, was a behind-the-scenes campaign to eliminate the profession's "golden attitude" that "whatever you do is inherently right" (p. 373).

McHugh had been certain that the riots, which KNXT did cover as breaking news, would waken this station and others, as he told clients in 1969, to a "need for news editors to he highly aware of the public's reaction ... [and] to plan the communication of news with perspective and relevance" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1969, p. 17). McHugh was flabbergasted when, after the riots, KNXT assigned reporters to bureaus it had opened near the Orange County government offices in Santa Ana, the statehouse in Sacramento, and in Washington, DC. Then, after research detected a "sermon-like" tableau of "politicians and government affairs" in Atlanta, McHugh confronted executives and news managers. The public, he said, wants relief from "run of the mill news from the state capitol, the legislature, and city hall," and from "news conferences, meetings, and speeches" (WAGA-McHugh & Hoffman, 1968, p. 15). It was at that point, as he related in his speech to the IRTS, that McHugh (1975) equated broadcast journalism's "lousy job" with the "small group of upper-middle class people" who produced and reported the news (p. 378). Only by "get[ting] down to where the mass of people are," he insisted, could television "educate the audience" and could the high ratings that broadcasters demanded be achieved (p. 380).

In what proved to be his final attempt to convince the five CBS-owned stations, McHugh had outlined a means for broadening news selection in proposing a concept called "reporter involvement." "The basic force behind the Middle Majority's increasing dependence on TV ... is the medium's ability to literally show the viewer what's happening." However, "the 'rules and regulations' advocated in the name of journalistic integrity have evolved out of the history and character of print journalism." Because "Lower-Middle and Upper-Lower class people ... are simply not equipped to deal with abstract material," television must seek news that viewers are "more able to grasp," that which "will affect their lives." Essential is the "range of news stories [to which] this applies .... [A] child's death will immediately cause focused attention; whereas a report on Russia's wheat crop is a more difficult story." Ultimately, these "viewers want news to better understand the world in which they live, to more effectively cope with their problems and issues, and to enhance themselves in their own eyes." Therefore, "it is essential that viewers be given ... those news stories which clearly portray the human dimension" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1966, pp. 1-5).

From Class Theory to "Eyewitness News," 1966-1971

In September 1966, McHugh & Hoffman was fired by the CBS local stations group. Speaking for the group, CBS president John Schneider had thanked McHugh (1966b) for a "pleasing association." Coleman (1995) recalled different events. He said that the CBS local station managers in New York and Chicago had "screamed bloody murder" when McHugh had insisted they intervene in newsrooms and, as McHugh soon would advise remaining clients, initiate "the training and development of a new type of news editor" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1969, p. 17).

The strain had escalated in New York, where flagship station WCBS had remained far behind ratings leader WNBC. The research had painted a picture of what McHugh had regarded as WCBS's backward priorities. Although "upper middle class viewers show the greatest increase in [station] viewing," the 1965 WCBS report had stated, the "upper middle audience is the hardest to please, and being relatively small in number, ... is the audience least worth worrying about from the standpoint of building viewer volume" (WCBS-McHugh & Hoffman, 1965, p. 26). The report had urged "new material, not [a] rehash [of] something read in the newspaper" (p. 25). It pled for a weather report, which "Channel 2 does not have [but which] has extreme popularity" and "attracts viewers" (p. 191). Hearing this, CBS decided it no longer needed researchers and consultants (WCBS-McHugh & Hoffman, 1965).

Left with only the five Storer stations, McHugh was unsure his firm could survive. Storer, too, had seen only marginal ratings gains. Auspiciously, as McHugh (1966a) recorded, Storer owner George B. Storer, Sr., impressed "with the knowledge [we have] gained from research," had ordered a management change and steps toward "rapidly implementing these recommendations." New vice president Terry Lee (1966) warned that station managers and news directors would be replaced if their newscasts continued to look like "1952 television" and "old fashioned." In 1967, Detroit's WJBK introduced a new format that "looked like Detroit" and which had heeded SRI's recommendation, reiterated by McHugh in a March 1967 presentation and reviewed in a letter McHugh send to Lee, that news stories focused on "problem solving" and "working class situations" would wield "a significant impression on the audience" (McHugh, 1967). After two decades of second- and third-place ratings, WJBK was the No. 1 station when November 1967 ratings were released. Reaction to its coverage of the Detroit riots that July was comparable to that elicited during the Kennedy assassination (WJBK-McHugh & Hoffman, 1968, pp. 21-27, 74-113).

It was in March 1968 that McHugh & Hoffman obtained the contract with ABC that led to the events described in Powers's book The Newscasters and in many other works on "Eyewitness News." Although authors have recognized Al Primo's role in innovations that made "Eyewitness News" a ratings sensation, Primo related that soon after joining New York's WABC that September that McHugh had given him the research reports that CBS had ignored. As he recalled: "We were 'TV generation' rebels who wanted to change TV by giving news ... to average people, the real viewers of TV. What we got from McHugh-Hoffman was proof that social classes did exist." This instilled confidence, Primo said, as "we pushed ahead against some of the worst elitist criticism you could imagine" (personal communication, February 17, 2002).

WABC's "Eyewitness News" premiered in November 1968 with 9% of the audience. Primo told SRI he wanted a direct numerical analysis of news content. Further, he had SRI determine not only viewers' preferred news content but whether they felt WABC was providing it. In the March 1969 research, the still-new "Eyewitness News" was rated "relatively weak" in responding to crime (52% preference), schools (49%), slums (42%), race (41%), health (36%), pollution (35%), jobs (35%), taxes (26%), traffic (20%), government (16%), parks (16%), transportation (14%), and prisons (13%; WABC-McHugh & Hoffman, 1969, pp. 8, 156).

In the February 1970 research, "Eyewitness News" was rated "outstanding" in covering narcotics and vice (31.2% preference), schools (28.7%), violent crime (26.4%), housing (25.0%), health (21.5%), welfare (18.1%), race (16.0%), pollution (13.9%), transportation (9.0%), taxes (6.2%), and parks (2.0%; WABC-McHugh & Hoffman, 1970, pp. 9-10, 136). "Part of the success of 'Eyewitness News'" Primo stated, was that "we decided we were not beholden to politicians" and would "not cover government for the sake of covering government," choices validated by the obscurity of those subjects in the research. At 9% percent 2 years earlier, WABC's share of the audience was 35% in the ratings of November 1970.

During 1970, McHugh & Hoffman expanded its clientele to 40 newsrooms. The rival Magid firm, which began news consulting that January, had 30 newsrooms by the end of the year. Magid founder Frank N. Magid, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Iowa, had trained under David Gold. Gold had been yet another student of Lloyd Warner, and a classmate of Glick, Levy, Rainwater, and Coleman, while at the University of Chicago. Warner's death that May was reported in a New York Times article that credited his "significant contributions to the understanding of current American culture" and his "study of class structure" that "gave rise to a large program of concrete research on American life ("Prof. W. Lloyd Warner," 1970). McHugh paid tribute in 1983 when interviewed by the Washington Post. Commenting on broadcast journalism's shift to "live remotes, personalized reporting, visual excitement, and people stories," McHugh said that, indirectly, all this "was invented in 1941 by sociologist Lloyd Warner" (Grove, 1983, p. 19).

After the ratings triumph at WABC, McHugh & Hoffman had acted rapidly in formalizing not only Primo's innovations but the theories for them set forth by the sociologists. The blueprint suspected by Powers and others did exist. It was contained in a 1971 manual entitled The Elements of a Television Newscast that was marked "Confidential" and circulated each time McHugh & Hoffman joined a new newsroom. So that competing newsrooms would not acquire the information, clients were told to hide or destroy the manual once its provisions had been implemented. The literature had been partially correct in conveying the plan. Yet, by not having seen the report, authors were unaware that its contents were as much a treatise on class stratification as an instrument that changed TV news (McHugh & Hoffman, 1971).

Implicit in Elements was the problem that impeded effective television news: that those in newsrooms, because of their professional associations and colleges degrees, did not instinctively recognize the "average viewer." This person, "who is, at best, high school educated," approaches a newscast "with two diametrically opposed emotional frames, (1.) a tremendous need or desire to know what's happening and (2.) a tremendous fear of finding out." Thus, a successful newscast must broaden its reporting beyond the "most important story of the day" with a "method of presentation which is both completely informative and bearable." Lower-middle and upper-lower class viewers "do not want a laundry list of facts." Hence, "every item of news, no matter how insignificant, [must be] invested with some meaning--if it has no meaning it is not news" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1971, pp. 5-6). Editors must concentrate on items they may consider irrelevant but in which, to average viewers, meaning might be self-evident, such as "low income housing, alcoholism, welfare, crime, bussing and unemployment." Moreover, "almost without exception, the most popular newscast in any market is the one which presents the most and clearest visual effects." Imperative was "tightly edit[ed]" footage of "press conferences, city council sessions, public meetings, and principal speakers." Cameras should seek "footage depicting rat infestation, low quality housing materials, access to retail fire arms, lines of welfare recipients, etc." (McHugh & Hoffman, 1971, pp. 8, 24). Further, "if an extremely important story happens to be related to weather, ... it should be presented [as] news." "In short, every news event meets the needs of the average viewer--a person who, in all probability, is at best a high school graduate" (McHugh & Hoffman, 1971, p. 12).

McHugh (1983) never stopped scorning what he termed the "fat, dumb and happy" attitude of professionals and critics who "refuse to see or accept the fact" that media were controlled by "the mass of Americans" (p. 5). However, secured by the fortunes of broadcasters who had followed his plan, McHugh shifted from confrontation to sport in disparaging, in his view, the folly of elitism in TV news. Speaking before artists and intellectuals in 1980, McHugh mocked those in TV news who were not "excited" about informing "ordinary people" with "hard news, health and medical information, weather news, consumer news and reports about crime in the streets" (pp. 9-10). Interviewed on the TV program Entertainment Tonight, McHugh said that newsrooms who dismiss "the mass majority of Americans" are "preaching to an empty tent" (Mann, 1983). Close to a pastime was his harpooning of journalism schools. McHugh (1985) told the National Association of Broadcasters that "unfortunately [knowledge] does not come with every journalism degree. The majority of journalism school graduates are still often too close to print and copy with little or no understanding of the visual aspects of news" (p. 4).

Yet, rarely was McHugh seen, heard from, or quoted in public. He and his staff hammered their ideas inside newsrooms, where reward came not from rhetoric but results. One of many examples fortified by experiences in the 1960s occurred in 1976 at Boston's WBZ. At issue had been the station's "Upper-middle classness." The consultants had insisted that because of an "Upper-Middle class personality," the "whole newscast needs to be 'smoothed out.'" It "projects so strongly an Upper-Middle class image that the situation is very unfortunate" and "one that cannot be ignored" (Bowen, 1976). One year later, McHugh & Hoffman complimented WBZ. It was praised for changes which finally had made WBZ's "Eyewitness News" "intimate, interesting and entertaining," which had stimulated a perception that reporting "was down-to-earth [and for] 'ordinary people,'" and in which "viewer satisfaction with Channel 4 newscasts" had been honored in a 41 share (WBZ-McHugh & Hoffman, 1977, pp. 24, 260-262).

Conclusion

Little seen here diminishes the bulwark of study that has proven that audience ratings exist in television news. Explored here is a different question: Why did newscasts decline as "media of record" and come to predictably portray police, children and pets, celebrities, and "team" coverage of fleeting events. With focus groups and field surveys, a new channel for news communication was created. This channel broke into a prism of American society. The largest strata were the lower-middle and lower classes. These viewers achieved--through more focus groups and field surveys--the power to direct the content they preferred.

Beyond the melodrama that had accompanied Phil McHugh and others, the history adds two dimensions to that which is known about the development of television news. The first concerns the context in which audience research was established in newsrooms. Identified was SRI, an entity that although scarcely known in media literature is distinguished elsewhere in scholarship for contributing to an "organizational revolution" in American enterprise around the time of World War II. That TV news became part of this event is acknowledged by today's scholars who refer to newsrooms as modern organizations. Yet, not often are newsrooms studied that way.

The organizational era had commanded two principles: first, that an organization's first concern is survival; and second, that organizations exist at the pleasure of their constituents. The science of SRI had fulfilled these commands from its ability to learn about constituents and then to instill, through the layers of organization, a final result in the image of constituents. Nothing that news consultants had brought to newsrooms had departed from what these same entities had brought to General Motors and dozens of major corporations. They made clear that a news organization's first concern is dissuading viewers from changing channels, an effect that cancels journalism and voids newswork factors scholars may study. They exhorted that the fate of the Edsel awaited a news organization that gathered only news. More important was the gathering of audience research, from which constituents were learned and from which an organization's survival had depended.

The second and more provocative dimension is that given by the sociologists and their methods for class stratification. Although modern sociologists have advanced more complex ethnic, lifestyle, and occupational class arrangements, Warner's prestige system had been standard at the time it entered television news. As was illustrated, recent estimates of class composition based on Warner's model have shown little change. Still observed is a minority "upper" society roughly equal to the 30% of adult Americans with 4-year college degrees, and a majority "middle-lower" society roughly equal to the 60% who have attained high school diplomas. In examining the work of these sociologists, there was little to suggest that they had engaged in what Powers (1977) pronounced as "sophistry" (p. 132), or what Diamond (1975) surmised was "mumbo jumbo" (p. 107). Unseen was the "plot" to "join the lowest common denominator" that Barrett (1975, p. 89) had reported. Nor was there evidence to support Barrett's conjecture that the sociologists had pressured a "Machiavellian climate" of "ratings points and profit motives" (p. 110). Profit-making and market factors had barely weighed in their determinations. From their perspective, profits were transparent in broadcasting's commercial scheme.

The sociologists got through to broadcasters by laying before them a simple truth, that no public service program could serve one American public because one American public did not exist. Realizing they could choose from among many publics, broadcasters were unburdened of the idea that public service meant small, unprofitable audiences. There is no such thing as "a great audience or the television audience," Glick and Levy (1962) had assured them, but rather "people of different social classes" all of whom are legitimate (p. 17). The sociologists had repeated that "civic responsibility" first applies to "the audiences selected out of the mass" (p. 21). In addition, they had reiterated that television neither could ameliorate "mass audiences" nor "exhort them to a [higher] position" (p. 17). As Warner (1962) had stated: "The mass media must break through the private meanings of small groups" (p. 9). When this occurs, "the mass media are successful not only as profit-making organizations but also as conveyors of common meaning to most of the people in America" (p. 9).

Future studies of television news should consider the sociological perspective that is told in its record of events. This perspective is intriguing because it can provide an explanation for television news that does not require discussion of profit motives, market factors, and ratings points. Required instead is a shift in thinking from newsrooms to viewers, as well as toward the concept that majorities rule. Invented by sociologists, the focus group did become the organizing instrument of television news. Once this occurred, viewers became participants in the news process. If this process is important, so is knowing more about who these viewers are.

References

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Warner, W. L. (1962). Preface to Glick, I. & Levy, S. Living with television (pp. 5-10). Chicago: Aldine.

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Note

(1) Access to the McHugh & Hoffman materials is arranged through requests to McHugh & Hoffman collection, John E. Bowen III, 5203 Abingdon Road, Bethesda, MD 20816, JEBowen3@aol.com.

Craig Allen (Ph.D., Ohio University) is an Associate Professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. His research interests include broadcast news, mass media history, and international mass communication,

Table 1
Estimates of Class Composition (% of Population)

               Warner and Lunt   Rossides   Kerbo    Beeghley
                   (1941)         (1990)    (1991)    (1996)

Upper                 2            1-3         1         3
Upper-middle         12           10-25       21        21
Lower-middle         32           30-35       22        21
Upper-lower          42           40-45       43        40
Lower-lower          12           20-25       13        15

Table 2
Field Research Status Index

Income (Individual)                     Score

<$5000                                    1
$5,000-$9,999                             2
$10,000-$14,999                           3
$15,000-$19,999                           4
$20,000-$24,999                           5
$25,000-$34,999                           6
$35,000-$49,999                           7
[greater than or equal to] $50,000        8

Occupation                              Score

Unemployed                                1
Marginal semiskilled                      2
Average skill blue collar                 3
Skilled craftspeople                      4
Small business owners, technicians,
  office workers, civil servants,
  small sales                             5
Middle management, teachers,
  knowledge workers, creative             6
Middle owners, top management,
  professors, top knowledge workers       7
Top owners, corporate executives,
  accomplished professionals              9

Education                               Score

Grammar school                            1
Some high school                          2
High school diploma                       3
Some post high school                     4
2-3 years college                         5
Bachelor's degree                         7
Master's degree                           8
Doctoral degree, professional degree      9

Residence                               Score

Slum area                                 1
Poor housing                              2
Blue collar area                          3
White collar area                         5
Excellent area                            7
Wealthy, society neighborhood             9

Status                                  Score

Upper class                             35-33
Upper-middle class                      32-24
Lower-middle class                      23-17
Upper-lower class                       16-10
Lower-lower Class                        9-4

Note: From McHugh & Hoffman. (1983). Computerized status index
(Television 1983-KPR File, Box 23). McHugh & Hoffman Collection,
Bethesda, MD.

Table 3 Percentage of News Content Preferences by Class in Detroit

                                      Upper-   Lower-   Upper-   Lower-
                              Total   Middle   Middle   Lower    Lower

Respondents                    99       13       33       39       14
Elements
  Weather                      59       48       55       66       61
  Human interest               49       31       48       61       54
  "Good" news                  46       48       45       49       44
  Crime/breaking news          42       30       35       52       51
  Health                       40       28       35       45       50
  Investigative                39       29       35       46       42
  Local news                   34       27       34       39       35
  Sports                       34       29       32       36       38
  Live news                    32       16       29       43       42
  Public affairs/government    30       40       22       29       31
  Business                     27       34       21       23       28
  Problem solving              25       16       23       31       32
  Helicopter coverage          21       6        15       26       32

Note: WDIV-McHugh & Hoffman. (1996). Report of findings (Reports
Section, pp. 125-138). McHugh & Hoffman Collection, Bethesda, MD.