Frank Magid and local news

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Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, says that media research consultant Frank N. Magid had great influence but that it needs to be put in perspective.

If you don’t like the format of your local news station, Magid shouldn’t get all the blame.

Magid, who died Friday at 78, ‘is one of those guys who really, really influenced television.’ But Thompson also believes that many elements of Magid’s formula — a livelier broadcast, with chatty co-anchors engaged in light-hearted conversation and a wider mix of stories, including crime and lifestyle features — would have been adopted anyway.

‘Frank Magid is not the reason everything doesn’t look like the Jim Lehrer hour,’he said.

You can find Magid’s obituary here.

-- Keith Thursby