The relationship between television news producers and anchors/reporters has been studied at the local level, but it hasn't been examined at the national level. This study's authors surveyed correspondents of the traditional news offerings at ABC, CBS, CNN, PBS, and NBC and of newsmagazine offerings at ABC, CBS, and NBC. We found that most respondents reported at least a good relationship with their producers and thought the producers improved their story quality and edited the stories adequately. However, there were differences between the two groups. Newsmagazine correspondents had a better relationship with their producers and felt producers improved the quality of the product more than traditional news correspondents believed the same of their producers. Correspondents who reported a poor relationship with a producer had lower job satisfaction than those with a good relationship. In fact, more than one-fourth of the correspondents' job satisfaction was linked to the producer relationship.
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