JCOM
2010
ABC 4 Utah
Who owns them?
ABC 4 belongs to KTVX. KTVX was bought by Nexstar Broadcasting Group July 19, 2012. Nexstar officially became the owner of ABC 4 and CW 30 on December 3, 2012 (ABC 4, 2018). ABC stands for the American Broadcasting Company.
How many are owned by the same parent company?/Are any owned by independent sources?
Nexstar Broadcasting owns 46 television stations across America.
(Reference for Business, 2018). Most of these TV stations also affiliate with the four major television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. The firm owns about 2/3 of these stations(Bercoviki, 2013).
What is their annual revenue?
ABC 4s is currently estimated annual revenue is between $10 and 20 million dollars and employs a staff of approximately 100 to 249 (Manta, n.d.). I dug around for a long time to find even these broad numbers. I think because ABC 4 Utah is a smaller network it's harder to find this information.
Where do they get their revenue from?
ABC 4s revenue comes primarily from advertising. It also gains some from retransmission fee's (Pew Research Center, 2012).
What’s their reader/viewer share?
The number of households watching ABC 4's nightly news was 45,000 people. In the last 10 years that number has declined to 21,800. This is because TV and media has changed. The increase in news media across all platforms and easy all day access to it creates a lot of competition (Pierce, 2017).
Is there a particular story that “made” this news venue particular popular?
The station started in 1948, 70 years ago. From the beginning it was doing more than 100 hours of broadcast. The station has had one of the longest schedules in the nation showing programs from 9:30 a.m. to midnight. ABC 4 showed America's first national, live views of ski racing at Alta, Utah. It televised the first nationally viewed golf match and the first broadcast of the Tabernacle Choir (ABC 4, 2018).
Was there a story that this news venue is particular well known for scooping?
ABC 4 is known for scooping local Utah news.
How does the news site frame itself?
ABC 4 often also goes by Good4Utah. Their website tagline is "We tell local Salt Lake City news & weather stories, and we do what we do to make Utah a better place to live" (ABC 4, 2018).
How is it perceived (conservative/liberal/moderate/completely unreliable/well-respected
for fairness/etc)?
ABC 4 leans right and plays more on the republican side of stories. They have a largely Utah Republican audience that may be the cause of this.(Pierce, 2018).
DAY 1: November 7, 2018
Grade:
F
Total: 36/133
DAY 2: November 8, 2018
Grade:
F
Total: 54/114
DAY 3: November 9, 2018
Grade:
F
Total: 52/190
FINAL GRADE
F
Total: 142/437
While watching and comparing ABC 4 Utah News to my other two stations I found that it has way too many peripheral stories. Two out of the three days there were less core stories than peripheral stories covered. Something that surprised me was how few stories the station actually covered in their half hour programs. This allowed them to spend a long time on the stories they chose to cover for that day leaving more time to refer to credible sources. I found them to be quite opposite from KSL 5 in their approach to reporting stories. The biggest problem with ABC 4 News was when they spent a long time peripheral stories which happened a lot. They dedicated a lot to sports stories and their “cold case” crime stories. Their actual core stories usually scored pretty descent and they had the potential to better overall if they had dropped some of the peripheral stories.
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