Women Dominate On-Air Hires
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When it comes to on air talent that is available in TV news, women dominate most of the reporting hires.
Let’s use the Buffalo TV market as an example.
The Buffalo News writes that of the last 23 new reporting hires made at the three over-the-air network affiliates in a little more than a year, all but one has been a woman.
If you look at the classrooms of J-Schools, it is mostly made up of woman.
So why is that?
FTVLIve talked to a couple of Journalism professors and they pointed to two reasons as to why? First, the pay in TV news is very low compared to other white-collar jobs.
Second, the job of Journalist no longer comes with respect and now often looked down upon.
FTVLive thinks that you can blame cable news for that. Talk to people and they will tell you how they have little respect for Journalism. But, as you start asking them questions, you find out their disdain for job is almost always centered on cable news. In other words, local and network TV news get lumped into the same basket of cable news by the viewers.
They look at Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Brian Stelter and Steve Doocy and put them in the same category as the people they watch on the 6PM newscast.
As for the low pay? That can be contributed to the bottom line ownership groups that now dominate local TV.
While we are seeing J-School classrooms filled with women, News Directors tell FTVLive it is still hard to find qualified people to do the job.
“So many of the candidates I look at just want to “be on TV” and have no clue how to do Journalism,” said one News Director to FTVLive.
The ND also pointed out that many of the young hires also want to be social media influencers while also trying to be a Reporter.
Men are opting out of TV news for better-paying jobs and many qualified women are doing the same.
That’s leaving TV news with the choice of a woman that want to “be on TV” and also pitch products on Instagram.
So, how do we fix it?
First and foremost, we need the pay for Journalist to increase to bring more qualified people back into the business.
Also, we somehow need to get people to realize that the crap they see on cable news is not Journalism.
Sadly, I will not be holding my breath waiting on either of these things to happen.
