As I have watched and documented Wave3 news I have noticed a series of patterns that may or may not have obvious reasons to why they occur. One of the more obvious patterns I have recognized is the repetition of lengthy weather forecasts. This caught my attention because at my age I am much more interested in crime/accident stories rather than weather. The weather forecasts (based off of documented information) run about four to five minutes long where as crime stories run anywhere from one minute to three minutes depending on the severity. I found out (from the help of Mr. Miller and a few classmates) that this is because a large portion of the stations audience are elderly. We came to this conclusion because if you pay close attention to the commercials, they are advertising Medicine for heart disease, arthritis, etc., all of which are, more often then not, meant for the older people. The producers know that that group of people will be watching and the news is what they are most interested in.
Another pattern I noticed is that the blocks shorten as the show goes on. To be more specific, when the show starts the news anchors will present their stories for a lengthy amount of time, probably five to eight minutes. After that block a round of commercials will play but only for a short period of time. As the show continues the anchors start to shorten their presentations to about two to three minutes and the commercial breaks lengthen to about one to two minutes.
Many other patterns were noticed by my classmates that I myself did not notice until they pointed them out. Mr. Miller as well as my peers did an excellent job at clarifying and explaining each pattern they noticed and why they felt it was a relevant point. I feel now that these patterns have been brought to my attention, I will be able to notice them more and more in my news documenting. Also, I understand the reasoning behind why news stations do certain things they do.
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