News Releases

RTDNA/Hofstra Survey Finds Larger Markets More Likely to Use HD, Digital Use for Radio News Up

For Immediate Release: May 21, 2010
Contact: Ryan Murphy, ryanm@rtdna.org

WASHINGTON – The bigger the market, the more likely a television station is currently broadcasting in HD, according to the final installment of this year's RTDNA/Hofstra survey.

“According to the survey, two-thirds of television stations in the top 50 markets are already running local news in HD and all other market sizes below one-quarter,” said survey director Bob Papper, professor and chair of journalism at Hofstra University. 

A quarter of those stations that said they were not already broadcasting local news in HD said they planned to do so this year.  Forty percent of the news directors in top 25 markets said “yes” to broadcasting in HD this year if they weren't already doing so.  That number dropped to 15 percent for markets 151+, though.

RTDNA Members can access the full data from the survey by clicking here.

The survey also found that digital technology use in radio news has continued to edge up, with 62.6 percent of radio stations using digital audio recording and 54.2 percent using digital editing and mixing.

Those numbers spiked a bit more when the radio stations were asked about “percentage of news material.” Over 76 percent said their news was gathered digitally and 80.9 percent said it was mixed and edited digitally. Not surprisingly, 82.5 percent of radio stations in the survey said their news was played back or aired digitally.

About the Survey

The RTDNA/Hofstra University Survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2009 among all 1,770 operating, non-satellite television stations and a random sample of 4,000 radio stations.  Valid responses came from 1,355 television stations (76.6 percent) and 203 radio news directors and general managers representing 301 radio stations.

Some data sets (e.g. the number of TV stations originating local news, getting it from others and women TV news directors) are based on a complete census and are not projected from a smaller sample.

The annual survey is conducted for RTDNA by Bob Papper, the Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Journalism and chair of the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University.  This research was supported by the School of Communication at Hofstra University and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

About RTDNA

RTDNA is the world's largest professional organization devoted exclusively to electronic journalism. RTDNA represents local and network news executives in broadcasting, cable and digital media in more than 20 countries.