Numbers have never been a big part of the presentation of television news, which is why the major stories of the day consistently focus on the visually compelling–fires, natural disasters or, as seen this week, revolution in Yugoslavia.
Now more than ever, though, numbers are the critical financial underpinning of TV news, and the numbers are catching up with the 10 p.m. newscast at CBS-Ch. 2. Recent departures from the station–two of them this week–strongly suggest the 8-month-old broadcast experiment anchored by Carol Marin is not long for the airwaves, at least not in its current form.
“As much as you’d like to see it succeed, the viewers aren’t coming and you can’t justify buying the time for advertisers,” said Paula Hambrick, president of Hambrick & Associates, a media buying firm based in Orland Park.
“People are interested in news, not just the hard issues,” said Bill Miller, national broadcast media director for CIA Medianetwork, a Chicago-based media buyer. “The telecast at times felt more like a PBS format or a Sunday newsmaker show. That’s not what the viewer wants at 10 p.m.”
The late night newscast is the flagship news event for TV stations and, in nearly every case, the biggest revenue generator of the broadcast day. Despite nationwide attention and an early aggressive promotional campaign for Channel 2’s newscast, the ratings have slipped substantially from last year’s performance.
After an uptick in the ratings when the no-frills, issues-oriented newscast launched in February, ratings in May dropped 13 percent from the previous year’s period. The ratings dropped an additional 17 percent in July, although summertime ratings slumps are common because television viewing is historically lower in the summer. Still, the trend line has been moving down at Channel 2 while ratings at ABC-Ch.7 and NBC-Ch.5 have changed only moderately.
“In this case there didn’t seem to be any signs that the audience was growing … and there didn’t seem to be any kernels of hope that there would be growth,” Hambrick said.
Officials at Channel 2 have declined to comment on the future of the 10 p.m. newscast, other than to acknowledge through a spokeswoman the plight of the numbers. “While the broadcast has garnered critical acclaim, the ratings have not improved. And discussions are currently being held regarding the direction of the broadcast,” the spokeswoman said, declining to elaborate.
Even though TV stations are just weeks away from a major ratings period, the basis upon which advertising rates are set, Channel 2’s 10 p.m. newscast is being referred to by some in the past tense. The reasons for its failure to thrive are complicated, say broadcasting and advertising industry observers. The audience for late night news is eroding nationwide. It takes a long time, far longer than eight months, to change viewers’ news-watching habits. Because newscasts are often held to the same ratings standard as entertainment programming, corporate patience to endure sagging numbers is wearing thin, they said.
And the Channel 2 newscast, which built itself as the serious rebuttal to the nationwide glitzy trend in local news, failed to acknowledge the market value of what television news has become.
“It lacked a production zip that people became accustomed to seeing on newscasts. The absence of that has had more to do with the failure of that show,” said Joseph Angotti, former senior vice president at NBC News and now chairman of the broadcast journalism program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
“I don’t endorse the idea of high production values, but once people become accustomed to seeing graphics and sound effects and a lot of movement and action, when they don’t see it, they miss it,” said Angotti, who described himself as a fan of the newscast. “I think the newscast just appeared to be too static for people’s tastes today.”
Carl Gottlieb, deputy director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, questioned the quality of the broadcast. “Good journalism gets good ratings,” he said, and TV journalism has to be mindful of presentation, public expectations and ratings. “In the best of all worlds, money wouldn’t matter, but this is the real world and money does matter, and it should,” Gottlieb said.
Investor demands are not unique to CBS. Nearly every major media company is publicly traded, and in an era of expanding cable TV, the Internet and all-news radio (ironically CBS is the biggest owner of all-news radio stations in the country), companies are scrambling to find and hold an audience. That has increased pressures to improve or hold onto ratings. At the same time it has created a desire for instant ratings gratification.
The local broadcast standard for decades has been dual anchors, enabling each–usually a man and a woman–to appeal to a particular demographic group. Channel 2’s single anchor approach, banking on the celebrity power of Marin, limited the options for the 10 p.m. news. Hambrick said the July ratings showed the biggest viewership from women older than 50. The targeted audience of advertisers is 25 to 54.
“As bright as she is,” Miller said, “Ms. Marin was not authoritative or personable enough by herself to pull it off.”
Miller said Channel 2 should consider teaming Marin with a co-anchor or possibly abandoning the news competition at 10.
“Does the city need three 10 p.m. and two 9 p.m. newscasts in this viewing landscape?” Miller asked. “WBBM may have more success with something else in that time period.”
