An era is ending on KUTV tonight.
"PM Magazine," the syndicated program that mixes national feature stories with local and regional information, is being taken off the air after 10 years as a Utah television fixture. It will be replaced in the 6:30 p.m. time period by "Entertainment Tonight" beginning Monday.Maria Smith, the KUTV programmer who has worked closely with "PM" during the last several years, said the decision to pull the plug on the series was a difficult one.
"This has been my baby," Smith said during a telephone interview Thursday morning, "so it's been a hard decision. But several factors came into play that made it clear to us that it was time for the show to end."
Chief among those factors has been a steady decline in the "PM" ratings in a time period Smith referred to as a key one strategically.
"It's important to us to be successful in the time periods we control," Smith said, "and it's important to the network that we be strong in the prime time access period. Obviously, they want us to be as strong as we can be leading into their prime time series."
Smith was also concerned about a "lack of responsiveness" to local needs by the national "PM" cooperative, and the direction the show seemed to be heading.
"After it went through it's `tabloid' period, `PM' never got back to where it used to be," Smith said. "There was a time when `PM' was a solid show, a lot like People magazine. These days the national material tends to be more like the National Enquirer, and that's just not a direction that we want to follow here at KUTV."
With the decision made to eliminate "PM Magazine," KUTV then had to decide when to do it and what to do with the "PM" staff.
The "when" was easy. With KSL set to make a change of its own in the time period on Monday (Ch. 5, you will remember, is replacing the canceled "USA Today" with its own "Eyewitness News at 6:30"), the time to move was now. "We figure folks will be doing a lot of sampling with the new show on the air," Smith said, "so why not give them another option to try?"
The staffing decision, however, is more complicated. "We've got some talented people involved there, and we hate to lose them," Smith said.
So they're not going to - at least, not yet. Tami Sanders, John O'Connor and the rest of the "PM" staff have been given what Smith calls a "three-month opportunity" to come up with some creative ways in which they can be used. "If we can find a place for them, we'll be delighted to keep them," Smith said. But, she added quickly, no one has been given any guarantees.
"There's a feeling of grief around here, no question about it," Smith said. "Anytime you close something that you're as passionate about as we have been with `PM,' there's grief. But there's also a feeling of new energy as you look at a chance to move on."
"Moving on" in this case will mean moving "Entertainment Tonight" into the prime time access slot and shifting the infotainment series "Hard Copy" series into "ET's" old time period at 11:35 p.m. (great news for fans of the genre, who can now wallow in "A Current Affair" at 10:30, "Inside Edition" at 11:05 and "Hard Copy" at 10:35).
But don't think of this as a stop-gap measure, as has been the case with previous "ET" time shifting at KUTV.
"We've done a lot of research into the time period, and we really think `ET' is the answer for us there," Smith said. "In fact, if we hadn't already had `ET,' we would have gone out and tried to get it."
Which is why KUTV has made a multi-year commitment to Paramount, "ET's" production company, for keeping the show in the time period. "Hard Copy," meanwhile, is being given a nine-month trial at 11:35.
As for "PM," its 10-year trial period is over. Tune in tonight at 6:30 to see how Sanders and O'Connor say good-bye.