My speciality. Шепелева М.А - 37 стр.

Broadcasting's Conus Communications, are news exchanges or cooperatives to
which users also contribute stories from their own regions. Whatever the
arrangement, video news services can make even the small market station newscast
seem as visually dynamic as the journalistic products of one of the big three
networks. If this sense of expanded coverage is accomplished at the expense of
local coverage, however, the ultimate benefit to local viewers (and stations) may
be substantially diminished. "Local stations will have to be more local," warns
Gannett Broadcasting news executive Richard Mallary. "That's how to defend
against cable television competition," a task made much more formidable by
CNN's l991triumph in Persian Gulf War reporting. Nevertheless, argues Post-
Newsweek Stations' executive Jim Snyder, "what impresses people is local
coverage." Finally, in addition to AP, UPI, and the national visual news exchanges,
a number of state and specialty news networks have been organized with varying
degrees of success to provide agricultural, financial, sports, weather, and regional

oriented material. On the audio side, complete talk nets have been formed as an
ancillary activity by established radio network companies to enhance local
conversation formats with national-appeal guests and hosts. Though some people
would be reluctant to call such offerings "news," they serve the same purpose as
conventional news services in making informational product readily available to
local electronic media outlets in an efficient and affordable form.

      Audience Measurement Services

        Another service provider even more central to the economic well-being of
radio and television outlets is the ratings service. Through a variety of sampling
techniques, these companies seek to determine the size and composition of
station/channel/network audiences so that advertisers can obtain estimates of who
and how many consumers are being exposed to commercials placed on those
outlets. For print media, audience measurement is a fairly concrete and
straightforward operation. Since 1914, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has
monitored and documented the circulation of most magazines and daily
newspapers in the United States and Canada. Because a copy of a publication is a
tangible commodity, the dissemination of these commodities is relatively easy to
track and use in estimating probable readership figures. An electronic signal, on
the other hand, does not bundle itself into countable copies. Instead, its audience is
determined by how many people choose to tune to its initially invisible trans-
missions. Broadcast ratings services, then, arose as attempts to estimate how many
people within range of the signal were actually being exposed to it.

      Radio Telephony Blossoms into Radio

       With the onset of Work! War I, wireless activity and research were focused
on the needs of the military. On the one hand, this activity spurred the further