Newload Study Finds 59% Are Open to Locally Produced Comedy
Updated: Feb 23
72.4% are interested in local news. 34.7% don't believe they get enough of it.
In this report we outline what we learned when we researched topics around satire, local news, audience habits and motives.
This is combined data from the PEW Research Center , The SAGE Journal, and a Bizbio Inc. conducted Google Survey (View RAW data at the bottom of this report) of between 1000 and 700 random people from the United States, Canada, The United Kingdom and Australia.
A Summary of Key Findings
59.3% of people say they are open to giving local satire a chance.
74.4% of people think local news is important.
72.4% of people are interested in local news.
34.7% of people don't believe they consume enough local news.
From 2014 to 2022, there are 36% fewer newspaper reporters.
Since 2008 newspaper revenues have dropped by 60%.
71% of people think newsrooms are doing well financially.
62% of people have heard of The Daily Show as a news source.
50.0% of people say they enjoy satire.
40.2% of people say they think satire can reach people who don’t like the news.
45.1% of people say they think satire can inform people of important issues.
80% of satirical-news viewers list entertainment as the main draw.
53.3% of people say they don’t know of any amazing local talent. (We beg to differ)
(Review other findings by checking out the RAW DATA)
Primary Finding
59.3% say they are open to giving local satire a chance
We wanted to know whether or not people would be willing to give local satire a chance. Though shows like the Daily Show, or Saturday Night Live, are very successful on the macro level, until now, very little is known about how modern audiences would react to similar content on a local level.
We found that 28.8% of people would absolutely give local satire a chance, 14.6% would not give local satire a chance, 30.5% say "maybe", to giving local satire a chance and 26.1% had no opinion. In all, 85.4% of respondents were not against giving local satire a chance.
It’s hard to have an opinion about content you haven’t seen. We believe as long as locally produced satire is consistently funny, or at least amusing, audiences will watch.
Public Sentiments Regarding Local News
74.4% of people think local news is important.
We wanted to understand how many people recognize the importance of local news.
We found 74.4% of people believe local news is important. 8.5% do not think it's important and 17.1% have no opinion.
Though the more people who think local news is important, the larger the potential audience, good comedy will appeal to even the uninterested. Indeed that's its strength.
Example of a Newsload Story: Two Newsload correspondents argue as they follow the mayor to her car. Who gets to ask the big juicy exposition question? If the mayor addresses them, all the better. Improv comedians keep her talking and the laughs coming...
72.4% of people are interested in local news.
We wanted to find out the percentage of people interested in local news.
We found that 74.2 of people have an interest in local news. 12.4% of people do not have an interest in local news and 15.3% of people have no opinion.
Different from understanding importance, is understanding interest. One may understand the importance of something, but have no interest in learning more about it. Here we see that the percentage of people who see local news as important and interesting is roughly the same.
34.7% don't believe they consume enough local news.
We wanted to understand if people who understand the importance of, and are interested in, local news, translate that into their media habits.
We found that 45.3% of folks think they consume enough local news. 34.7% of people don't think they consume enough local news and 20% of folks have no opinion.
If only 45% of folks think they get enough local news, as the previous results indicate, there is a significant gap between thinking local news is important and consuming it.
Health of Local Newsrooms
From 2014 to 2022, there are 36% fewer newspaper reporters in statehouses.
This is a finding from a PEW Research Center Study. They crunched the data to discover how many on-the-ground reporters are still reporting local news from statehouses throughout the United States.
Here we see the number of on-the-ground journalists has dropped dramatically over the 8 years of the study. Fewer journalists working means fewer important local news stories being told and more degradation to democratic guardrails. When the cats are away the mice will play.
Since 2008 newspaper revenues have dropped by 60%.
This finding is from a PEW Research Center Study. They crunched data to determine the financial viability of newspapers across the U.S. generally.
This data shows us that the business model that has traditionally supported local news is toast. People are interested in local news but not enough to support local newsrooms. This is clearly a problematic trend for democracy. If corruption becomes endemic...
71% of people think newsrooms are doing well financially.
This finding is from a PEW Research Center Study. They crunched data to find out how much local folk know about the crises in newsrooms.
Here we see the disconnect. Vast numbers of people are interested in local news; they believe local news must be doing well financially – while at the same time – journalists are being laid off and newspapers everywhere are downsizing or closing.
Public Sentiments Regarding Satire
64% of people have heard of The Daily Show as a news source.
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