I'm Eric Garment. I'm a junior broadcast journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park.
I aspire to be a sportscaster, with my dream job being an announcer for the New York Mets, my favorite team growing up and now. Part of the reason that the Mets are able to keep their fans tuning into broadcasts is their announcers. Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez have won multiple New York Emmy awards for their television game calls and Howie Rose is a mainstay on WFAN radio.
One of the questions I have in regards to personalities and broadcasts is - how important is the talent in retaining viewers? This doesn't apply to just baseball, many news broadcasts can gain or lose notable viewers based on the reporters they have on camera.
For example, after Dan Rather's departure from CBS' evening news broadcast made way for Katie Couric, CBS executives were hopeful that the first woman to anchor a major television network's nightly news would cause major ratings boosts. Instead, CBS lagged behind NBC and ABC, actually hitting a ratings low for a 20-year period. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/cbs-evening-news-pelley_n_917494.html)
My goal in trying to understand news audiences is to get a better grasp of what makes a successful broadcast. What things can be done outside of traditional advertising to bring more people to a certain station? How can Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media improve or detract from news? Hopefully those questions and any others that may arise will be answered not only this fall, but in years to come.
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