May 1
New York City, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles
8:02 P.M. EDT / 7:02 P.M. CDT / 6:02 P.M. MDT / 5:02 P.M. PDT
Given the day—given the press of other news considered far more immediate, if potentially no less dire; given even the brief speculation on near-term gasoline prices—the story of an “accidental” explosion at a Texas refinery received less than thirty seconds of airtime on NBC.
This news judgment was considered professionally justified, despite a usually tragic death toll of twenty-seven and counting, if only because it matched the average airtime provided at the other networks. With millions having been killed the day before, two-dozen-plus additional bodies in an industrial accident—even less newsworthy, at a facility located in the not-bicoastal Southwest—required a certain sense of perspective.
This was agreed independently—without the need for any inter-network collaboration, much less any conspiracy.
A traffic jam in New York City also received a Nightly News nod, fifteen seconds on NBC. Todd Lieberman’s earlier news judgment also proved itself sound: No video accompanied the story.
The time saved by this savvy news budgeting was instead transferred to the continuing coverage of the death of a President, to the government-supplied video of a new one taking the oath of office at an “undisclosed location,” and to the now—again, as put in perspective—relatively “old news” of the destruction of both Presidents’ former capital.
A story about one more “crazed gunman” was bumped from two of the three major broadcast networks; ABC carried a ten-second anchor-read, but only because it had a struggling affiliate near the Kansas town in question—though several cable news channels gave it more time. On MSNBC, it was given a full fifteen seconds.
Only six people died, after all.
Among the producers and news directors and others in the broadcast industry across the nation, it was uniformly agreed that it had been one hell of a news day.