Maybe it’s the limited battery life. Maybe it’s the screen size.
Whatever the reason, a new survey is probably sweet music to the ears of TV news professionals and PR execs who focus their attention on winning broadcast coverage for their clients.
Even with rapidly expanding consumer use of tablets and smart phones, the TV set remains the top access device for news, according to a new survey, The Personal News Cycle, from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute’s Media Insight Project.
Of those polled, 87% said they use television to get news, 69% used a computer, 65% radio, 61% print, 56% a cell phone and 29% a tablet.
Along with affirmation of television sets as the primary device for watching the news, the survey also found consumer trust their local new outlets more than other news sources.
Eighty-two percent of the nearly 1,500 respondents to the phone-based study said they got news from local TV, followed by 73% who got news from broadcast network TV. Newspapers were third at 66%, followed by 24-hour cable news at 62% and radio at 56%. Age was said to have only a limited impact on those numbers.
The most popular content on local TV news was traffic and weather, followed by 84%. Cable news dominated as the trusted source for politics, international news, business and the economy, and social issues.
