The Pew Research Center has released its State of the News Media 2015 report.
According to Pew, viewership and revenue were up at local TV stations in 2014.
But the trend in rising viewership could be bad news for anchors and crew who like to sleep late. Viewer numbers were up for early morning and early evening newscasts, but down for late night news.
Very early morning news remained the biggest growth area, with 4:30 a.m. newscasts seeing a 6% boost from the year before. Stations also continued to experiment with news at 4 a.m., starting and stopping newscasts at that time throughout the four sweeps months. In February, for example, 22 ABC affiliates aired news at 4 a.m., but only four were doing so in November. News at midday posted 8% growth, while local news at 7 p.m. Eastern time or equivalent (after the network news or early evening local news) was up more than 10%.
According to Pew, local FOX affiliates are seeing a shift in viewership from prime time to mornings. FOX affiliate morning shows have seen a 13 percent gain in viewership since 2010, while losing 17 percent of viewers for the 10:00 p.m. newscasts over the same time period.
One other interesting note, revenue from retransmission fees have been steadily growing over the last decade, according to SNL Kagan. “In 2014, retransmission revenue were estimated to reach almost $5 billion, and SNL Kagan projects that this figure will nearly double by 2020.”
click here to read the entire report.