PAI conducted its second snapshot of local news, focusing on WTHR’s 6 p.m. weekday news from February 5-9, 2007. That first full week of February 2007 provided some interesting programming.

WTHR-TV Channel 13, 6 PM News Analysis

Full Week Last Three Days Ads: 28% 36% Crime: 6% 9% Economy: 5% 8% Local: 14% 8% National/ International: <1% 1% Politics: 4% 7% Sports: 29% 15% Tease/Banter: 5% 7% Weather: 9% 9%

Monday, February 5 was dominated by coverage of the Colts Super Bowl win celebration parade. WTHR and all other local affiliates used their 6 p.m. news programs to cover the parade. WTHR spent the entire half hour with live feeds, and no commercial breaks. On Tuesday, February 6 an afternoon snowstorm hit central Indiana and the entire 6 p.m. broadcast was dominated by stories about the weather and traffic problems. WTHR did provide commercial breaks for the coverage. The rest of the week followed a more typical format of news broadcast. Politics was mostly coverage of the Indiana General Assembly and the progress of various bills. The only national or international news story was the death of Anna Nichole Smith. Numbers are provided for the full week, which shows a slant toward sports and local news (which includes traffic) and then only for the last three days (February 7-9) which may provide a more typical snapshot. (Note that due to technical problems we have a smaller sample period for WTHR than for the WISH-TV snapshot in January.)

The news program was analyzed by recording the number of seconds spent in each general category:

1. Ads: Advertisements for products and services, as well as promotions for the station and affiliate networks programming.
2. Crime: Information about crime, including the judicial process.
3. Economy: Information about building projects, business leaders, plant closings, etc.
4. Local: Information about things that are happening in the immediate Indianapolis community, including fires and traffic accidents.
5. National/International: Information about events with national or international impact.
6. Politics: State and local politics.
7. Sports: Any information about professional or scholastic athletics.
8. Tease and Banter: A tease is when the program highlights what will be featured later in the newscast. Banter is brief conversation that appears to be spontaneous and occurs between segments.
9. Weather: Information about the weather.

Nick Hess is Vice President of Public Access of Indianapolis.