Evergreen (journalism)

Within the context of journalism and broadcasting, evergreen content is content that is not time-sensitive. Evergreen content does not rely on current events; thus, an evergreen story can be prepared, then mothballed until it is needed to fill time on a slower news day or on a holiday when fewer journalists are on duty. The term is derived from the evergreen trees.

An evergreen news magazine has more flexibility in production, not having to be produced on a set time frame; instead of producing a new newscast every day or week, a show consisting of evergreen content can produce several episodes at once and release them in sequence. In contrast, such content is not as responsive to breaking developments.[1] Feature stories and human interest stories are usually evergreen.[2]

Evergreen television shows are ideal for reruns. Seinfeld, for example, has been one of the most successful sitcoms in off-network syndication for over two decades,[3] as its observational comedy did not rely on pop culture references that could become dated; in contrast, Murphy Brown, a show of similar longevity and popularity from the same era, was a syndication failure in part because of its frequent reliance upon current events of the 1990s.[4] A show's evergreen status can also be grounds for cancellation once a show has built up enough of a backlog of episodes that can be rerun without the viewer realizing the show has ended production; The Jerry Springer Show is one such example.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Gleiser, Paul. What happened to Paul Harvey at 7:30 each morning?. KTBB news release. Undated. Archived July 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ Garrison, Bruce (4 April 2014). Professional Feature Writing. Routledge. pp. 13–16. ISBN 9781135676773.
  3. ↑ Craw, Victoria (2017-02-08). "Steve Bannon is still making money from 'Seinfeld' reruns". The New York Post. Retrieved 2017-09-07.
  4. ↑ Pergament, Alan (January 25, 2018). "English is back with 'Murphy Brown' revival that fits political climate". The Buffalo News. Retrieved January 25, 2018. The attention to current events – which became old – is one of the reasons that "Murphy Brown" was never as big in syndication as expected.
  5. ↑ Rice, Lynette (20 June 2018). "Jerry Springer Has Stopped Making His Talk Show". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
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