2010 was an important year for the broadcast network news organizations, with radical transformations made to ensure some level as economic stability, while most of the key programs continued to see declines in viewership. That is the takeaway from the 2011 “State of the Media” report from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
PEJ’s network news report discusses at some length the efforts by ABC News and CBS News to streamline their operations in the face of a troubled economy. ABC and CBS both had substantial layoffs in their news divisions last year.
The report also looks at the evening newscasts, network morning shows and newsmagazines, and finds than nearly all were down in most measures compared to the previous year.
As the report notes, that is part of a trend going back 30 years, with the evening newscasts facing the most precipitous decline:
But despite the expectation that ratings will continue to erode in 2011, all three network news divisions hope to be profitable, thanks in large part to the cuts and newsroom transformations made in 2010.
NBC News was far and away the most profitable of the network news divisions, with total revenue of over $2 billion in 2010. Of course, that includes CNBC and MSNBC. Just the broadcast unit is believed to bring in approximately $850 million.
By comparison, ABC News brought in approximately $600 million, and CBS News a bit over $400 million.
Unfortunately, the cuts seen last year mean that there were fewer reporters to cover stories. The number of foreign bureaus increased in 2010, but these were largely one-person offices. nonetheless, foreign dateline coverage increased in 2010, though war coverage was down.
Read the full PEJ essay on network news here, and see the data here.