Is Local TV News Still Local?

This study examines local television coverage of the 1992 presidential and Senate elections and the 1996 presidential primaries in the Los Angeles media market. The core question is whether local stations have a specifically “local” focus in their news-casts, or whether instead their coverage has become similar to the national network news. The paramount finding is that in 1992, Los Angeles stations carried ten times the amount of stories about the presidential race compared to the coverage of the state's two Senate races; a corollary finding is that the 1996 primary reports are similar in style and substance to their 1992 counterparts. Local stations chose to use the presidential campaign as a symbol for government generally and were aided in their coverage by new technology, such as satellite hookups and video services.