It was wall-to-wall Manchester concert terror and White House intrigue as cable news was understandably fixated on tragedy overseas and political disarray back home, reports Poynter, but “a larger daily reality is that most of the nation’s viewers were tuned elsewhere. Local trumped national, as it does every morning when it comes to viewers, if not the interest of media critics.
“But all that was really secondary to its bread-and-butter, which on this day includes tales of a Chicago man facing animal cruelty charges for throwing two toy poodles off a five-story parking garage (one died, one survived); a fatal double homicide in an apartment viewed by two children; and the funeral of a Cubs fan who died in an apparently bizarre accident Wrigley Field as he fell backwards and hit his head.
“And this was all sandwiched between local weather forecasts by chipper Paul Konrad and traffic reporter Erin McElroy’s tales of rush hour challenges, such as one three-car pileup and a stalled car blocking a left-hand lane on a major expressway.
“As usual, far more viewers in the Chicago market were watching WGN that than any cable competitor. Far more.
“That holds true for the big network broadcasts, too. Whether it’s “Fox and Friends,” “Morning Joe,” “New Day,” “Good Morning America,” “Today” or “CBS This Morning,” it doesn’t matter. It’s no contest.
“The power and potency of local news endures, perhaps all the more so in a fragmented digital age.”
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