Local TV and Radio News Survey 2022

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Takeaways from The Radio Television Digital News Association’s annual survey of local TV and radio:

Programming

  • A new record of 1,116 TV stations aired local news—up 18 from last year’s all-time high.

Budgets

  • Just 16.3% of TV stations report budget increases while 29.3% report experiencing budget cuts.

  • Among TV news directors who do know their department’s profitability, 75.9% report a profit.

  • The percentage of radio news managers reporting their budgets decreased doubled to 18.2% over the previous year.

Salaries

  • Despite pandemic-related pay cuts, local television news salaries, on average, increased by 3.5%, or 2.1% after accounting for inflation.

  • TV salaries in markets 101-150 faired the best, with salaries for most positions increasing while in the top 25 markets, salaries for most positions fell.

  • Average and median starting TV news salaries both rose during 2021 to the highest staring salaries in the survey’s history.

Staffing

  • Full-time newsroom staffing fell 6.3% in 2021.

  • Digital staffing, on average, was up slightly, along with the roles of photographer, producer, editor and social media producer/editor.

  • Three times as many commercial radio news departments cut staff as added. Public radio stations, on the other hand, were four times more likely than commercial stations to grow.

Solo Journalists

  • The average newsroom has fewer solo journalists than last year while smaller markets overwhelmingly rely on MMJs, and mid-markets increasingly do, but few stations large market stations send reporters out alone.

  • MMJs and producers remain most in demand, representing about three-quarters of new TV news hires.

Innovations

  • More local TV newsrooms report producing virtual town halls, specials and longer-form or digital-exclusive content.

Social Media

  • Facebook is the most popular social media platform for local TV and radio news, with 94% of radio newsrooms and 100% of TV newsrooms reporting they used it.

  • Instagram is used by nearly every TV station and a third of radio newsrooms.

  • Twitter use among local news has been declining for several years, with most TV newsrooms using the platform, but less frequently.

Podcasts

  • The typical station, measured by median, has no podcasts and the average per station is less than one half.

  • The typical radio news department reporting zero podcasts.

Danger

  • 1 in 5 television news directors reported attacks on employees.

  • More than half of attacks occurred during coverage of civil unrest, protests, marches/rallies or riots

The Full Report

Ordering the mind

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Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness – a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is reality available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed. Compared to other sources of stimulation – like reading, talking to other people, or working on a hobby – TV can provide continuous and easily accessible information that will structure the viewers attention, at a very low cost in terms of the psychic energy that needs to be invested. While people watch television, people need not fear that their drifting minds will force them to fact disturbing personal problems. It is understandable that once on develops this strategy for overcoming psychic entropy, to give up the habit becomes almost impossible.

The better route for avoiding chaos in consciousness, of course, is through habits that give control over mental processes to the individual, rather than to some external source of stimulation… To acquire such habits requires practice, however, and the kind of goals and rules that are inherent in flow activities.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow