Hasta La Creative!

As the death knell sounds for the evening news, there may be a few culprits to blame who have gone unmentioned. One of them is advertising.

This is not because ad rates have dropped for evening news shows or because demographics have skewed to older viewers. Simply put, the ads that run during the evening news are unwatchable.

No fewer than 90% of the commercials that run during the three major network broadcasts are for prescription drugs, with the vast majority targeting an audience over 50 years-old. No one enjoys watching these commercials, so one must change the channel to escape. Inevitably, one switches the channel to another network’s news broadcast in time to view a different prescription-drug ad. Basically, one ends up changing channels three or four times during a break to avoid an ad for one-a-day (insert prescription drug here).

It becomes tedious.

Beyond the notion of why prescription-drugs ads were ever allowed on television, to have these dominate the nightly news broadcasts comes off as giving up on ever reaching younger audiences again. What is really happening here: The evening news is actually pushing younger people away, not to mention some older ones as well, who’d rather not watch these commercials either.

These are the kinds of things just may be killing off the evening news. Competition from cable and the Internet, etc. are part of the story, but they may be just that, part of it.

Garth Meyer is a copywriter and former columnist/newspaper reporter in Oregon. Contact him at: garthmeyer@att.net.