In Chicago, more people tune to ABC News than any other source. That’s what Channel 7 has been claiming for years, and that’s what the ratings show.
The numbers also reveal that at 5:30, Homer Simpson is clobbering Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather and is breathing down Peter Jennings’ neck. At 6 o’clock, when an average of 330,000 Chicago-area households tuned into Channel 7 during a 20-day time period ending Nov. 17, about 275,000 households watched reruns of “The Simpsons.” That’s more than the combined audiences for the news on Channels 5 and 2.
“Dohhhhhh!” as Simpson would say.
The numbers are worth keeping in mind as television stations approach the end of their November sweeps period on Wednesday. Officially, the quarterly sweeps are the basis for TV advertising rates. Unofficially, they have become the quadrennial measure of how much the television audience–especially for over-the-air broadcast programs–continues to dwindle.
And, obviously, they raise this question: Where have all the viewers gone?
The ratings for local news, prime-time shows and pro football are down from last season, the season before that and the season before that. All of them are victims of the same force that has slowly elevated Homer Simpson to giant-killer status–choice.
Americans aren’t watching less television. The TV in the average household was on for 7 hours and 15 minutes a day during in the 1997-98 season, practically unchanged from the previous five seasons, according to Nielsen Media Research.
And the Internet, despite a lot of high-octane boosterism from cyber-prophets, is not making a substantial dent in TV viewing. As a group, the first generation of children to grow up with computers is not forsaking the remote for the mouse, according to Nielsen.
But choice in the realm of American discretionary time is wreaking economic havoc in the television industry, resulting not only in lower ratings but visible changes in the on-air product and strains in the relationship with unionized broadcast employees.
The financial pressure has been building for years, and percolating in places like the kitchen of Deane Honbo, a housewife in Evanston.
Honbo is a self-described information junkie who “can’t stand coming into a quiet room. I come in and something has to go on,” she said. Honbo is the TV executive’s fantasy: In the townhouse she shares with her husband, Larry, televisions are on about 18 hours a day. And she is visually ambidextrous.
“People think I’m crazy, but I have no trouble discriminating between two TV sets on at the same time, one in the kitchen and one in the living room,” she said.
Neither, though, is tuned into Oprah Winfrey or “Seinfeld” reruns or “ER.” Since 1995, Honbo said, about 14 of those daily TV hours are devoted to CNBC, the business news cable channel. One of her VCRs starts taping CNBC at 4:30 every weekday morning. She’s up by 6:30, tending to the house and her investments. Honbo watches the local nightly news at 9 or 10 and likes sports on the weekends, but she generally ignores the prime-time programming that draws by far the biggest–albeit shrinking–audiences on television.
Honbo is part of the divided television audience that devotes more and more viewing to cable television and its wide array of specialty channels. Five years ago, cable claimed 26 percent of the total viewing audience. In the 1997-98 season, the percentage had leaped to 38 percent. Analysts see no leveling off of the trend toward cable, where growth is being spurred by cable systems’ ability to add more channels.
There is no typical TV viewer anymore, which makes Honbo’s example nothing more than anecdotal evidence. But millions of viewer anecdotes, just like the collective impact of several dozen disparate cable channels, create a force to be reckoned with. The proliferation of choices has made every channel on TV–cable and broadcast–vulnerable.
Channel 5, which is closing the gap with news ratings leader Channel 7, has invested in the tried-and-true stratagem of familiar faces. Last month, Channel 5 hired former Chicago Bears football player and Channel 7 sportscaster Mike Adamle as its nightly sports anchor and–in a most unusual move last week–lured veteran reporter Russ Ewing out of retirement.
Still, the ratings for the late nightly local newscasts have been slipping measurably, here and around the country. In Chicago, WGN’s broadcast of “Friends” reruns at 10 is within striking distance of third-ranked Channel 2’s local newscast.
In New York, reruns of “Seinfeld” already have ranked 2nd or 3rd in the 11 p.m. local news slot. In this sweeps period, “Seinfeld” trails the local ABC and NBC stations in New York, but has a huge lead over the CBS outlet.
People have been leaving the late local news for several reasons: the emergence of early news, where ratings have been more stable, and the multiplying availability of other information choices, like the Internet, and entertainment choices. Part of the exit also is attributable to the news’ predictable nightly broadcast menu of neighborhood chaos.
Annette Wallace, an account executive at WBEZ-FM, said she tuned out the local news “because I felt like I was living in the murder capital of the world.” Wallace, who is married and has a 2 1/2-year-old son, said she used to watch Channel 5 until the station briefly used Jerry Springer as a commentator on the 10 p.m. news.
“I used to watch television from the time I walked through the door,” Wallace said. Now she spends “just as much, if not more time” on the Internet. “There’s not much that interests me anymore on network television.”
Wallace, who is an African-American, said network portrayals of black families are “stupid people in stupid situations. I don’t know anybody like that.”
Barbara Alonso, a Downers Grove homemaker and mother of two daughters, ages 12 and 10, said the adult humor and sexual content on prime-time TV is forcing her to pay more attention to television time–and restrict it.
“I realize we’re just subject to the world we live in, but where I can have some control, I try to do it,” Alonso said.
Wallace said she senses a change is coming. The pro basketball lockout, for instance, just creates more opportunities to find something new to do and something old to discard. “I could see that within the next year or two never watching network television. It has no appeal,” she said.
That, of course, is the broadcast networks’ nightmare, because smaller audiences mean financial losses. The effects of that concern already have been seen this season in cheaper programming– more news magazines, more action-based reality-type shows. The 3-week-old lockout of more than 2,000 unionized technical employees at Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network is rooted in the desire to cut costs. That comes on the heels of hundreds of layoffs at CBS and NBC and new pressures on network-owned stations to increase profits.
The new television season has not been a strong one. Last week Fox, whose new programs have fared badly, said Doug Herzog, president of cable’s Comedy Central channel, will be the chief at Fox Entertainment Group. Comedy Central’s signature program is “South Park,” the raunchy and irreverent animated show that has become one of the hottest items on cable. Fox hopes that Herzog can restore the network’s edge.
Where do Fox and the other networks go? The ratings suggest that sexually suggestive and violent programming are popular. Even on cable, with smaller and more tightly defined audiences, eight of the top 15 cable programs in the most recent Nielsen cable ratings were pro wrestling shows.
The heart of broadcast network strategy is sports, because it brings in a large audience. That’s why ABC, CBS, Fox and ESPN committed to spend $18 billion to broadcast pro football in the current and next seven seasons. The big audience, though, isn’t as big as it used to be: NFL ratings have been sliding steadily.
Chris Corey, a database administrator who lives on Chicago’s Southwest Side, is both an opportunity and a problem for the sports-minded networks. Corey watches 12 to 15 hours of sports a week, most of it hockey. But he picks games up from his satellite dish, which does not get network television signals.
Corey said he misses watching the local news. He can switch over to his antenna and pick up the local stations, he said, “but the picture quality just isn’t the same. . . . I can watch the national news on CNN or MSNBC.”
At Chicago’s Channel 26, WCIU-TV, which lives on reruns and syndicated programming, General Manager Neal Sabin is pleased with the performance of “The People’s Court,” especially after losing “Judge Judy.”
Sabin is accustomed to being in the lower strata of the ratings, and he can see the day when those stations far ahead of him gradually get closer to the ground.
And he worries about there being too many choices to support the economic survival of everyone in the television game. “There may be an overload point sometime. I don’t know,” Sabin said. “I hope not. I hope not.”
