In today's society, news and entertainment can often be used synonymously, but many studies have separately examined the various aspects surrounding both of these topics. One aspect that is studied is programming styles. There has been a notable increase in the number of entertainment television programs, but regular television programming is still available (Keller, 1993). Once new types of media become available, those who enjoy entertainment begin to ignore old types of media (Prior, 2005). Recently, there has been a shift from old to new media when it comes to entertainment news (McNamara, 2011). To keep up with this change, news outlets have begun to alter their programming style through the use of entertainment-based stories. Another aspect that has often been studied is the competition between news outlets. These studies have increased due to the growth of a new competitor, the Internet (Meijer, 2007). Network news programs are now competing not only with numerous television channels, but also with numerous websites (Prior, 2003). To some extent this may help explain why there has been a decline in news audiences in recent decades (Prior, 2005). Even though there has been a decline, there is a large discrepancy between the number of people who watch the news and the number of people who say they watch the news (Prior, 2009). However, most people watch the news at least three times a week (Wonneberger, Schoenbach, & van Meurs, 2011). Nowadays, news programs not only have to compete with each other for viewership, but also with the Internet. Due to changing styles and increasing competition a different appearance, the ty...... middle of paper ......y, as spectators, believe and vice versa (Zanna & del Vecchio, 1973). How viewers perceive news stories tends to vary. A final, less studied aspect is the content of the news reported on the morning news. One-fifth of all stories reported on the morning news are related to promoted entertainment, whether promoting products, movies, books, or music (Cleary & Adams-Bloom, 2009). It is quite possible that the network television industry benefits from reporting promoted entertainment news (Cleary & Adams-Bloom, 2009; Nguyen, 2012). Morning news may include these trivial stories because viewers do not like watching morning programs that contain a lot of high-impact news (Cleary & Adams-Bloom, 2009). The content aspect of news stories will also be examined in this study.