While broadcast television continues to lose viewers steadily each season as more people tune in cable shows, one segment of the broadcast business is bucking that trend by holding its own.
The Big Three's evening news programs, as a whole, have retained their share of viewers from last year to this, even posting a slight gain. For the season to date, through Dec. 19, the newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC have attracted an average of nearly 32.7 million viewers each night, up from nearly 32.2 million last year.Unfortunately for ABC, the broadcast news gains have gone to its competitors. ABC's "World News Tonight" has suffered a serious loss of viewers. Last week, its ratings were down a hefty 15 percent over the same week the previous year; and overall they were down 7 percent.
Why is ABC the exception to the trend? One theory is that the other two news broadcasts have differentiated themselves more in viewers' minds, while ABC has been inconsistent. NBC's "Nightly News With Tom Brokaw" ousted ABC from the No. 1 spot in the ratings a year ago with a new approach called "news lite" by some critics but defended by NBC as better-told and more interesting stories. Some say ABC tried to imitate that approach and lost some loyalists to CBS, which is perceived to have a harder-edged, more traditional news broadcast.
"Television is more complicated than that, and a lot of factors go into this," said David Westin, president of ABC News. "But I think it is somewhat true that NBC decided to do a different broadcast than ABC or CBS, which is more featury, more popular-oriented, in some ways more akin to a prime-time news-magazine show. It's not bad. It's different, and has given them a certain distinctiveness."
But he also said that "World News Tonight" had changed its executive producer several times, for a variety of reasons, and that "no broadcast can go through so many changes without somewhat losing its way," both internally and in terms of "communications to the outside world."
Many journalists at NBC and ABC have been irritated by CBS's touting of its newscast as "harder" or "newsier," but they acknowledge that CBS has successfully conveyed that image to viewers.
Asked about NBC's soft-news image, David Doss, executive producer of the network's "Nightly News," pointed out that on Friday nearly the entire broadcast was devoted to reporting on Iraq.
"You can't consider that anything but a hard-news broadcast," he said. "We believe there are no rules anymore except one, which is the one we adhere to: that we must deliver the news and make it interesting and relevant to viewers."
But all agree that promotion helps.
"I think the hard-versus-soft distinction is way too simple," Westin said. "More important is how we are covering news - how probing are we being, what questions are we asking. We do need to explain to the American people that we offer something that is lacking in many other places - serious journalists covering a wide range of topics, some popular, some serious, but always with depth of analysis and explanation."
Overall, with NBC promoting its news programs heavily, and CBS "pushing our hard-news concept," as David F. Poltrack, executive vice president for planning and research for CBS, put it, those two networks seem to be developing more viewer loyalty. That has happened without the boost of a riveting news event like the gulf war or the Oklahoma City bombing.
"In other years when the network news ratings have improved, it has had to do with a major news event or with stronger performances by their networks in prime time, but now the prime-time pattern continues to be problematic," said Poltrack, "problematic" being a polite word for "steadily downward."
UP AND AT 'EM FOR CBS: While the unexpected comeback of Dan Rather on the "CBS Evening News" has become one of the most discussed topics in the TV industry, a similar surprise has occurred in the morning competition. The long moribund and all-but-written-off "This Morning" on CBS is displaying signs of renewed life.
Over the past year, in fact, the show has risen 14 percent in the ratings, and just as is happening in the evening news competition, "This Morning" seems to be taking advantage of an exodus of viewers from ABC.
In fact, while not exactly breathing down its neck, "This Morning" has become at least a mild threat to the rapidly declining "Good Morning, America" on ABC.
That show is down 13 percent for the year. In the most recent week of ratings, "Good Morning America" had a 3.5 rating, down from a 4.2 last year, while "This Morning" had a 2.7 rating, up from a 2.3 last year. (Each rating point represents 980,000 homes.)
Al Berman, the executive producer of "This Morning," said, "We've gone from also-ran to also-in-the-running."
He pointed to several reasons for the show's improvement, including what he called "a strategy to create high-profile contributors." Those have included Martha Stewart and Gene Siskel. Last week Berman added the handyman Bob Vila.
CBS has also gone with what Berman called a "clear counter-programming plan" by turning over about two-thirds of the show's first hour to local stations.
About 20 percent of CBS stations take the first full hour of the two-hour "This Morning," and the rest run about 14 minutes of the first hour from CBS and fill the rest with local reports.
One other phenomenon that the morning news competition shares with the evening news rivalry is a reversal of the trend of erosion of network viewing. Both CBS and NBC are up in the morning, offsetting ABC's decline. Overall network viewing is up 2 percent in the morning.