• Associated Press / Yahoo, Tuesday, May 2, 2006 11:15 AM

For those who looked to TV's leading newsmagazines as the one redeeming virtue of the messy, often lowbrow medium, the trend is not good.  Fewer newsmagazines are on the air, they are broadcast for fewer hours than they once were, and there's reason to believe that one or more will disappear in the near future. Their replacements?  Reality TV.  That's the conclusion drawn by reporter David Brader, who surveyed the landscape for the Associated Press. “60 Minutes” remains a TV stalwart, to be sure, but its audience is down significantly from its peak. Either “Primetime” or “20/20” will likely disappear from ABC's lineup within the year, Broader speculates. Newsmagazines have "morphed into something that is farther away from news and much closer to entertainment," says Joe Foote, acting dean of the University of Oklahoma's journalism school. "They're a long way from their roots." Susan Zirinsky, executive producer of “48 Hours Mystery” on CBS, says, "I think the audience feels that the real-life drama that was the bread-and-butter of magazine shows was supplanted by the artificial reality of reality television. It's as if the audience is sated. A&E's 'Intervention,' 'Survivor,' 'Nanny 911,' they all have elements of humanity in a crisis point."

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