THE WORLD OUTSIDE - LOCAL TV-NEWS TREATMENT OF IMPORTED NEWS

This study sought to determine whether stations located in larger or s maller markets gave different treatment to news and to resolve whether disparities noted among small and large television market news progra ms extended to their treatment of news imported from outside the marke t. McManus's economic model of inexpensive, passive discovery held tru e over the journalistic model of active surveillance in smaller market s, where stations not only devoted less time to news than those in lar ger markets, but a greater proportion of their news content was import ed, thus passively discovered. The larger the market size, the more ac tive the discovery. Some evidence that imported news supplants strictl y local news in smaller television markets was found. Furthermore, alt hough major-, large-, and medium-market stations devoted higher propor tions of their news hole to sensational and human interest news, stati ons in the smallest markets imported a greater proportion of sensation al/human interest news than they originated locally.