Posted by Bud on February 13, 2010 at 13:39:39:
'70s news doctor believed in giving people the news they wanted
Founder of research, consulting service died at age 78
Frank Magid died last week — and if you did not know this or who Magid was, perhaps this is part of his legacy.
Magid, who died of lymphoma Friday at age 78 in California, was what they call a news doctor. Some would say he was the news doctor.
Although his Iowa-based research outfit would service a wide range of clients in a wide range of capacities, Magid became known as the go-to consultant in the 1970s as television station owners came to recognize their news operations as profit centers rather than mere public-service obligations.
A Chicago native who channeled his background as a professor of social psychology, anthropology and statistics into founding Frank N. Magid Associates, Magid and his team told the stations what people wanted, and then advised them on how best to deliver it.
Thus were born scores of bantering "Action News" teams in color-coordinated outfits and lookalike sets, not just in this country but around the globe. Emotional engagement, problem solving and "happy news" with higher story counts and less depth came into vogue.
"I've always said if I ever had anything to sell, I would have hired Frank to sell it," WLS-Ch. 7 anchor Ron Magers said. "He really was a great salesman."
Magid was often seen as an evangelist of the kind of local news lampooned in Will Ferrell's film "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." It's a description one presumes he would appreciate if only for its accessibility, given the advice his firm parceled out to CBS' San Diego affiliate in 1973.
"The vast majority of our viewers do not read the same books and magazines that you read," said the report, as quoted by former Chicago Sun-Times TV critic Ron Powers in his book, "The Newscasters." "In fact, many of them never read anything."
Frankly, there was nothing inherently wrong with Magid's fundamental idea to find out what viewers wanted so the way the news was delivered could be refined. Tell stories better and in a more interesting fashion. If something's important, make it clear why. Mass media are supposed to be for the masses, and any business that willfully ignores its customers' preferences won't be much of a business for long.
On the other hand, executing that takes skill and judgment. Plus, real news can't always be only what people want it to be.
Magid's reputation as a boogie man, fair or not, was the result of station managers and news directors — from lack of conviction, lack of instinct, lack of intellect and/or lack of courage — too often treating the recommendations of Magid and his company as a step-by-step instruction manual to ratings windfalls.
Sometimes the results of this were beneficial or innocuous. In other instances, however, they were at best misguided and at worst anti-journalistic. And because the recommendations nonetheless tended to work from a ratings standpoint, it was hard to convince anyone that calling an audible might have worked even better.
When Magers arrived in Chicago from Minneapolis in 1982, he told the Chicago Tribune part of the reason he left KSTP was "continuing differences with Frank Magid," who consulted the station and was tight with its owner.
"I believed in Frank's research," Magers recalled Tuesday. "I often disagreed with his recommendations with what we should do with the research. That was where we parted company."
Magid's KSTP research indicated audience interest in state government coverage was low and told the station to shut down its capital bureau in St. Paul. Instead, Magers, who was also news director, beefed up the bureau and changed the way the station covered state government, reporting more on the impact of legislation rather than the legislative process itself.
"At the end of that year, the interest in state government news had moved up dramatically, according to Frank's own research," Magers said. "So people weren't saying they didn't want that. It was just showing our failure (to make it compelling)."
Magid's research was science. The rest obviously was not.
"A.M. America," ABC's precursor to "Good Morning America," relied on Magid's firm to determine almost every detail, and its 10-month run in 1975 remains one of the more spectacular bombs in network television history. Magid's recommendations near the end couldn't save the Chicago Daily News.
"It is not surprising … that research indicates ratings rise when the broadcaster is successful in exposing the listener to what he wants to hear in the very personal way he wants to hear it," Magid said in a 1974 report to Chicago's WMAQ-AM, according to Powers. "In terms of news, this means ratings are improved not when listeners are told what they should know but what they want to hear."
So long as that remains true, Magid's influence will continue to be felt.
Magid's life and death may not be news you wanted, or at least news you knew you wanted, but some still would consider it news. The burden is on this end to make it of interest.