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TV News in Transition

Moderator: Stuart Brotman
Neal Shapiro Juju Chang: April 6, 2006; Running Time: 1:59:03

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

One of broadcast journalism’s power couples reminisce about their start in the industry, and discuss changes they’ve weathered, from global crises and anchor turnovers to the rise of cable and the much ballyhooed notion of technological convergence.

Neal Shapiro and Juju Chang both started at the bottom at ABC: Chang as a “gopher” ripping Telex copy, and Shapiro as a “glorified intern.” Shapiro recalls ABC’s eagerness to come out of last place in the three-way broadcast news race, throwing ‘incredible resources” at the chance of exclusives. Shapiro was at NBC when the climate changed for that network, and subsequently for the others, as “big corporations wanted news divisions to make money.”

Chang describes how newsrooms, which have “a kind of family dynamic,” are acutely conscious of ratings. You’ll see “jockeying for position” and “reporters fighting for scraps.” There are minute-by-minute breakdowns of audience responses to shows, and while networks “don’t want to program toward the ratings,” reporters “are assigned the stories that rate well,” says Chang.

Shapiro, who oversaw the expansion of Dateline NBC from one to five nights a week, says news magazine shows serve a unique purpose: Networks produce and own all the material and can repurpose stories to fill different timeslots. When Shapiro took over NBC, just after 9/11 (“the biggest story of my lifetime”), he sought an approach to the crisis different from the other networks. He took his newsmagazine journalists and “unleashed them on the breaking news world.”

While cable news and reality TV pose a challenge to the three networks, Shapiro believes “There will always be a place for long-form storytelling” and that the audience for evening news is still enormous (26-30 million), and “won’t go away for a while.” The network anchor will continue to be the go-to figure “when the world falls apart.”

Programming for a variety of outlets, including cable and the internet and even cell phones, poses the danger of depleting the energies of the networks. “We need to play in all these platforms,” says Shapiro, and the “content needs to differ from medium to medium.” Chang says that producing pieces for the web to attract viewers both to the website and to the broadcast “taxes our time.”

During the Q&A period, the speakers answer questions about the popularity of the Jon Stewart show, the passivity of the news media in response to the Bush Administration, and the increasing lack of analysis and perspective on television news.

Lecture Details

Location: Bartos Theater

About the Speakers

Moderator: Stuart Brotman

Founder and President, Brotman Communications Visiting Scholar, Comparative Media Studies, MIT

Stuart Brotman's global management consulting firm advises CEOs and other senior managers on strategic business, communications, policy and technology issues. Previously, Stuart Brotman was president and CEO of The Museum of Television & Radio. He was one of the founders of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and a special assistant to President Carter's communications policy advisor.

Brotman is the author of several books, including Communications Law and Practice, now in its 12th edition. He has taught at Harvard Law School, and at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He earned a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1978, and his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Neal Shapiro

Former President, NBC News

Neal Shapiro joined NBC News in 1993 after 13 years as a producer and executive at ABC News. At NBC he served as director of news operations of MSNBC where he helped to shape its cable programming and its innovative web site. He was named president of NBC News in 2001, a post he held until September, 2005.

Juju Chang

Correspondent, ABC News

Juju Chang is an Emmy Award-winning correspondent for 20/20, and Good Morning America. She also occasionally anchors for ABC News Now and Good Morning America's Weekend Edition.

Chang won a Gracie Award for a PBS Now story about judicial activism and a Freddie Award for a another series that she hosted for PBS, The Art of Women's Health. From 1999-2000 she anchored the early morning newscasts of World News Now and World News This Morning. From 1998 to 1999 she reported primarily for World News Tonight.

Chang was based in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 1997, where she covered the White House, Capitol Hill and the 1996 presidential election for NewsOne, ABC's affiliate news service. Prior to her NewsOne assignment, she was a reporter for KGO-TV in San Francisco, from 1995 to 1996, where she covered a variety of state and local issues.

Chang graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and communications. At Stanford she was awarded the Edwin Cotrell Political Science Prize.