Rivals in Consonance: The Case of Television Network News.

A study that examined consonance among the three major television networks' evening news programs for the period 1973 through 1981 used multiple criteria to assess long-term patterns of network similarity in news selection and treatment. A random sample was drawn, using one constructed week of five weekdays per quarter of the nine years and yielding twenty broadcast dates per year, or a total of 180 dates. The newscasts were coded for several variables, including length in seconds, focus, and topic. Agreement was high in between-network comparison: correlation of annual topic agendas, distribution of items or coverage among different geopolitical regions, correlation of topic agendas for items receiving additional network emphasis, contrasts of annual mean length of items, and correlation of topic agendas of "lead" items. Only in percentages of items distributed devoted to the different categories were there major differences among the networks. Results indicated that there are significant similarities between the evening newscasts of the three major networks. Several tables conclude the document. (DF)