What the heck has happened to television news? And along the way, what has happened to the "news consumer"?

At one time, just 30 years ago, the three major networks held the rapt attention of the American people at 6:30 p.m. every weekday evening. It was how families set their clocks. It was how they planned their evenings. It was must-see TV. Major news anchors - consider Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite - were the most trusted icons in American society. News audiences were estimated at about 55 million in the heyday of broadcast news. The heyday for the news business is now - regrettably, in my opinion - in the rearview mirror and fading fast, despite the likeable personalities now filling the anchor chairs at the broadcast networks.

Today, the three broadcast nets' (ABC, CBS, NBC) evening news shows are seen regularly by only 26 million viewers, a loss of a million over last year and a like drop every year for the past 25, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Why are viewers turning away? What has happened to the television news business where I worked for 40 years?

There are still three, now over-paid, anchors on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. And there are four general news 24/7 cable news nets and innumerable sources, some actually containing news, on the Internet.

Today the average length of a sound-bite on a network (or local) newscast has decreased from 30 seconds to 7 seconds (a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs) and the standard length of scenes edited into a reporter's story has gone from four seconds to a mind-boggling MTV-ish 20 frames (there are 30 TV frames in a second).

But that's the tip of the iceberg that is sinking TV news. Here are some other points to consider:

• Fox News has built its audience based on an obvious conservative and partisan slant and has created a suspicion that all news networks or news programs are subjective, not objective.

• Local news is doing brief anchor "tells," often with video supplied by CNN and other affiliate video services, of national and international news stories. The local news shows precede the net news, so why watch network news?

• The Internet's multiple choices for news and the blogs that are accepted as news (and, of course, most are pure opinion) leave news consumers with the mistaken belief that they are well informed. The big problem is that Internet news consumers shop for the news they want - "want to know" stories - and avoid the real news "need to know stories."

And on The 24/7 news nets:

• Viewers tune in to CNN, Fox, Headline News and MSNBC for 10 minutes or less any time day or night and think they have gotten the news. Ratings data illustrates the short viewing length.

• This political/election season has spawned the most ever political "experts," many of whom know only what they read or hear somewhere else...and they're all on cable news nets.

• The lack of balance adds to the perception that a news organization is biased. The producer thinks that having opposing views on a subject separated by 15 or 20 minutes is OK as long as it is within a news show, typically an hour. But there is no guarantee the viewer will be tuned into that show in 10 minutes.

• From Frank Rich in the NY Times, "The fireworks were...heated to a boil by a 24/7 news culture that inflates any passing tit for tat into a war of the worlds."

• Repetition is necessary because of audience churn. The downside is when the story involves difficult-to-watch video: dead bodies or body parts or soldiers hung from a bridge or screaming hostage handlers preparing to slit a hostage's throat. Those who witness that video repeated over and over for a 24-hour news cycle become de-sensitized and just turn away from news. Numerous studies support this fact.

• The second impact of the repetition necessary to the 24/7 news nets is the negative impact of repeated negative news. If you hear every hour how bad the economy is, how no one is buying, how consumer confidence is shaken, doesn't that exacerbate a further decline in consumer confidence? It's unavoidable. When the broadcast networks evening newscasts were the only source for news on TV, the economic story was in front of the viewers for two-and-a-half minutes with balance, sound bites from the nay-sayers and the positive thinkers. You saw it once for a limited time, not repeated and repeated with an endless parade of "analysts."

• Once at CNN, a beautiful local anchor with long blonde hair and the name Cinnamon asked me why I wouldn't hire her. My response: Who will believe you when you say World Leader So-and-So has been assassinated? When I taught at the University of Georgia, I would advise female anchor wannabes that to look credible they must foreswear hair more than shoulder length and flashy jewelry. I am afraid that whoever is doing the hiring at CNN, Fox, Headline News and MSNBC is putting glittery, glamorous looks ahead of real news credibility.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a free press or a free press without a government, I would prefer the latter." But what if no one uses or believes the free press because it has been so abused? Is that out future? If so, what about democracy?