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Jake Gyllenhaal as video mercenary Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler.
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One of my dearest grad school professors came to academia from the news desk of an Alabama TV station. She wrote her dissertation on the relationship between morbidity and ratings, observing a significant increase in the coverage of violent crime and trauma during the ratings sweeps of February and November. TV ad rates for the rest of the year are determined by the audience measurement snapshots taken during these periods.
The pressure on local news programs is enormous. Their ads typically account for more local revenue than any other programs a station carries. Thus, low ratings frequently motivate personnel changes. Anchors, reporters, news directors — they all live and die by the ratings book. So the connection of ratings and revenue to the “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” headline is intensely personal. You want to keep your job? Deliver eyeballs. Make people watch.
