ABSTRACT
It may be the age of the internet, but local television newscasts in the United States still draw substantial audiences (collectively more than popular cable programming), and importantly those audiences include both (1) sizable numbers of Democratic and Republican identifiers and (2) viewers who otherwise do not follow politics closely. As such, local TV is poised to be an important provider of information to the US public on politics and public affairs. This chapter will examine – across both campaign and policy contexts – what is known about the volume of political and public affairs content aired on stations across the country and how variation in coverage can be explained by a variety of factors, including: the demographics of the audience for a given story and production considerations by journalists; characteristics of the station (including station ownership and network affiliation); structural factors (such as the amount of competition in a given market and how key political boundaries do, or do not, line up with media market boundaries). In addition, the chapter will highlight how the game-frame and strategy of politics often pervades local coverage, even when the subject of coverage is policy and not political campaigns.
