It's (Still) The Economy, Stupid.

We noted yesterday that the headline about Apple raising prices on most everything it sells appeared in very few local TV newscasts we screened across the country. And that struck us as an interesting microcosm of what is happening in the editorial process in many TV newsrooms across the country.

The Apple story was pretty easy to tell on the surface level. The maker of iPhones and Macs raised its prices on most everything it sells, with the exception of iPhones, the company's best-selling product. The reason for the price hikes? Apple’s outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, blamed the worldwide memory chip shortage on the meteoric rise of AI-supporting data centers, seemingly everywhere.

OK, seems simple enough. But maybe this isn’t a general interest story. Maybe it’s just another business item that perhaps warrants pulling in an AP story for the website and letting the network handle this one?

But hold on, is this a story that the audience might be interested in? Given that we have seen local TV newscasts dutifully cover every announcement of a new iPhone or the recently announced upgrades to the Siri assistant that is built into every iPhone, and whether those AI-powered features represent a larger story in Apple’s lagging in the artificial intelligence race?

We saw many of those stories on local newscasts we checked in on.

Again, we would argue that the fundamental topics of these stories, all centered on the same company, one of the world’s largest, are telling of a larger struggle in every local newsroom. Figuring out what stories actually matter to the audience and delivering those in a manner that makes people want to consume the newscast in some form, on some platform.

The Apple price increase story has a fair number of angles. The stated reason for the move is that memory prices have skyrocketed as the chips have gone into short supply. Is it true that as of this article’s publication, there is only one significant memory “fabrication” plant in the entire United States—and that single Micron Technology plant in Virginia generates only two percent of the worldwide supply of memory chips? Plus, wasn’t there a recent government plan to address this problem?

Yes, yes, and yes.

The CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2022. The approximately 280 billion dollars allocated by the bill included over 50 billion targeted towards “the manufacturing of semiconductors” here in the United States. What has happened since? To directly quote the Wikipedia page on the Act: “…these projects are faced with delays in receiving grants due to bureaucratic hurdles, shortages of skilled workers, and congressional funding deals that have limited or cut research provisions of the Act by tens of billions of dollars.”

There are new semiconductor manufacturing plants, known specifically as “fabrication plants” or just “fabs” by the tech world, under construction. But getting from breaking ground to producing chips at volume takes years, and projects to bring new “fabs” online won’t be completed until 2027 at the earliest.

Until then, the U.S. is at the mercy of large semiconductor makers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics. And of course, prices for their products have been impacted by the on-again, off-again, and back-on-again imposition of tariffs.

We’re reminded here of Ben Stein’s hilarious role as the economics teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” who is doing the deadpan roll call and asking “Bueller?…Bueller?…Bueller?” If you’ve seen the movie (and what is wrong with you if you haven’t), you’ll recall that in the next scene, we see Stein’s classroom, where he is lecturing about the effectiveness of tariffs with the dialogue that includes: “Anyone..anyone? Raised or lowered tariffs? Raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.”

Given the frozen teenage faces that director John Hughes intercuts with Stein’s lecturing, the same faces that anyone who ever sat in a high-school classroom has made, it is no wonder that a local TV newscast might avoid this kind of economics story.

But given the real-world reality of Apple raising prices on its products, just before the back-to-school buying spree gets underway in the coming weeks, this development would even qualify for some coverage under the heading of consumer news. Perhaps even more so, because Amazon’s Prime Day sales event, currently underway, still has most of the same Apple products either at the original (lower) prices or possibly on sale at their lowest price this summer.

Perhaps you are thinking of the inevitable defense to why this story didn’t make your local news last night: “It’s not really a local story. It doesn’t impact that many people in the community.” Well, that might seem the case, but we’d counter by asking just how many people in the community were impacted by the random crime event or vehicle crash that was probably on your local newscast last night?

By example, we’ll offer up what we saw on our local Fox O&O’s newscast last night after the coverage of the USA vs. Turkiye World Cup match. A Breaking News animation alert came on the screen, and the anchors delivered the news that a single-engine private plane had crashed four hours earlier at an airport some two hours south of the Twin Cities, near Rochester, Minnesota. The 74-year-old pilot, the single occupant of the aircraft, had died at the scene, but there were no other injuries and no other damage to any structures near the airport. Those were all the details available at the time.

The anchors then made the jarring pivot — to return to covering the World Cup, and a small watch party with local people enjoying the game. A story, based on the daylight in the reporter’s stand-up, was clearly recorded before the end of the match that had just concluded with a disappointing, yet relatively meaningless loss.

Of course, the small airplane crash is a news story. But given the facts available, including the location being hours away, in a completely different television market, did it really impact that many people that it should have warranted being the breaking news lead story for the significant audience coming off the primetime World Cup match?

With no other facts known at the time, we will state with some confidence that Apple’s price hikes would be of more interest than the “Breaking News” of the small plane crash hours away. And for the record, no—we wouldn’t have led the newscast with either story.

Our point is this: Economics stories might not seem like the flashiest stories of any given day. But in most people’s worldview, the whole issue of “affordability” is a daily concern. Like the completely disengaged faces in the movie classroom, you may not need to know the specifics of the significance of “The Smoot-Hawley Act.” Still, you definitely care about what is going on with the cost of everything, every single day.

And that should be reported more in every single newscast.

A final note about that scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” We recently saw an interview with Ben Stein in which he tells the story of how John Hughes asked him to step in as the teacher in the classroom for the scene in the movie! Stein had just been on the set, visiting a friend who was a producer on the film, when Hughes noticed his distinct voice and asked if he’d like to be the unseen voice of the teacher.

Stein jumped at the chance and so entertained the cast and crew on the set that Hughes decided to put him on camera in what became an unforgettable scene in the now 40-year-old comedy film. (It was released in June of 1986.)

Oh, and he improvised his entire dialogue for the scene. No script, no pages. He just adlibbed the entire thing.

“Anyone? Anyone?”

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