During television's recently completed May sweeps period, the Jazz went 9-1 in the playoffs, eliminating the Clippers and the Lakers and going up 2-0 on the Rockets.
Oh, and Utah's NBA team also beat up on Michelle King, Phil Riesen, Kimberly Perkins, Randall Carlisle, Ruth Todd, Dick Nourse, Hope Woodside and Bob Evans.The basketball ratings put a big dent in the late-news ratings of Channels 2, 4, 5 and 13. (See accompanying box.)
The Jazz's run through the playoffs did some extraordinary numbers for KJZZ. The seven games that aired in prime time on Ch. 14 averaged a whopping 29.1 rating and a 44 share.
(A rating point represents approximately 6,300 homes. A share point equals 1 percent of the homes actually watching television at a particular time.)
The single highest-rated game of the sweeps (a four-week period that ended on Thursday, May 22) was Game 5 against the Lakers - a night when KJZZ did an amazing 38.8 rating and a 57 share.
And even that doesn't tell the whole story. There were undoubtedly still more viewers watching the Jazz on cable channel TNT, but the local overnight ratings system still doesn't measure them yet.
The first two games of the Western Conference finals - the Jazz vs. the Rockets - pulled in a 32.2 rating and a 50 share for Game 1 and a 33.6/50 for Game 2. And that fact is that those two Utah-Houston games actually did less damage to the local newscasts than the earlier games.
Those two Jazz-Rockets contests started at 6:30 p.m. local time, which meant they were over before KSTU-Ch. 13's 9 p.m. newscast and well before the 10 p.m. newscasts on Channels 2, 4 and 5.
(Ch. 13, of course, still had a great deal of competition from Ch. 14's postgame shows, however.)
When factoring in the competition from the Jazz, the local late newscasts dropped dramatically, as compared to the nights the news did not compete with basketball:
- KUTV-Ch. 2 shows an 8 percent loss.
- KTVX-Ch. 4 shows a 7 percent loss.
- KSL-Ch. 5 shows a 6 percent loss.
- KSTU-Ch. 13 shows a 13 percent loss.
What makes this all the more amazing is that the Jazz only directly competed with the newscasts on five out of 28 nights during the May sweeps.
In other words, the folks in the local TV newsrooms had to be a bit ambivalent about the Jazz. The better the Jazz did, the worse the news ratings.
TROUBLE AT CH. 2: When KUTV's new male anchor, Mark Koelbel, finally gets to work here - he's scheduled to begin on the Fourth of July - he'd better bring his Superman suit.
Or at least a suit of armor.
And he'd also better open a bank account fairly quickly. His contract with Ch. 2 will pay him $250,000 the first year, and between $1 million and $1.4 million over four years.
(Although local stations generally don't release salary figures, that will put Koelbel near the top of the local TV pay scale.)
The May ratings numbers brought even more bad news for Ch. 2 - the least of which is that the station's numbers hadn't bottomed out earlier.
The 8.5 rating the 10 p.m. newscast averaged was the worst the station has done in memory. And the 7.7 it did Monday-Friday was worse still. Those numbers represented a 23 percent drop in ratings and a 33 percent drop in share from May 1996.
The Salt Lake television market wasn't metered a year ago, but comparing Ch. 2's May numbers to February (when the market was metered), KUTV is down 11 percent in ratings and 14 percent in shares.
That's not a good trend.
The gap between third-place Ch. 2 and second-place Ch. 4 (3.4 ratings points) is the biggest ever. At the same time, the gap between third-place Ch. 2 and fourth-place Ch. 13 (2.4 points) is the smallest ever.
It's the first time Ch. 2 has been closer to fourth than to second.
Yes, all the stations were hurt by the Jazz. And all the stations were down from a year ago. But Ch. 2 dropped the most.
The early evening numbers don't hold any better news. For the first time, Ch. 2 slipped behind Ch. 5 at 5 p.m. The margin was small (Ch. 5's 5.5/14 to Ch. 2's 5.3/13) but significant.
And Ch. 2's 6 p.m. numbers held the worst news of all. KUTV could manage only a 4.0 rating and an 8 share for a show that was once its main early evening broadcast. It lost a quarter of its rating and a third of its share from May 1996 to May 1997.
That put Ch. 2 a big 3.9 rating points behind Ch. 5's 6 p.m. newscast and an amazing 7.2 points behind Ch. 4's 5:30 p.m. newscast.
And there's no obvious reason for the decline. Qualitatively, Ch. 2 is doing a job that's certainly comparable to its competitors. And the station is doing a better job of reporting and presenting the news than it did a year ago - and considerably better than it was doing two or three years ago.
In addition, Ch. 2's new news set is a considerable improvement over its old one.
KUTV can't even blame its late-news showing on lack of support from the CBS network. Ch. 2 actually did relatively well in prime-time during the May sweeps - its 10.7 average rating for CBS programming was only three-tenths of a point behind NBC/Ch. 5. (And CBS/Ch. 2 beat ABC/Ch. 4 by seven-tenths of a rating point and Fox/Ch. 13 by 3.2 points.)
So what's the problem?
The fact is, nobody really knows. Television ratings aren't like scientific experiments with controls placed upon them. Whatever happens in the ratings is the result of a combination of factors.
One factor that Ch. 2 can control is its on-air personnel. And the station is obviously betting that a new anchorman will help.
Koelbel will come to Utah from Corpus Christi, Texas, where he helped lift the NBC affiliate from third to second place in the ratings in the past three years. In Corpus Christi, he's known for being very likable and hard-working - he's currently anchor 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts.
Koelbel will be doubling his salary by moving to KUTV to anchor the 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts, but he also turned down offers from stations in Philadelphia and Minneapolis. His current boss let him out of his contract early so he could move to Utah.
The folks in Corpus Christi will be sorry to see him go - and the folks at KUTV are hoping they'll be happy to see him arrive.
MOST-WATCHED TV STATION: Sign-on to sign-off ratings don't really mean a whole lot - nobody buys ad time based on the average of a full day's worth of programming.
But it does allow one local station to brag that it is "Utah's most-watched TV station." And, during the May sweeps, that station was KSL-Ch. 5.
Here's the break-down of the averages:
- KSL-Ch. 5 - 6.0/18
- KTVX-Ch. 4 - 5.3/18
- KUTV-Ch. 2 - 4.2/13
- KSTU-Ch. 13 - 3.8/11
- KJZZ-Ch. 14 - 3.3/10
By the way, that's the best KJZZ has ever done. And the station was, of coiurse, greatly boosted by those Jazz numbers.
*****
Additional Information
Local news ratings
Here's a look at how the local stations fared during the May sweeps. The numbers are for 10 p.m. newscasts on Channels 2, 4 and 5 and Ch. 13's 9 p.m. newscast. The first pair of numbers in each category is the overall rating and the approximate number of households; the second pair (in parentheses) is ratings/households adjusted competition from the Jazz games.
Monday-Friday late news
Ch. 2 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 13
7.7 12.2 18.7 5.5
49,000 77,000 118,000 35,000
(8.3) (13.3) (20.0) (6.0)
(52,000) (84,000) (126,000) (38,000)
Sunday-Saturday late news
Ch. 2 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 13
8.5 11.9 19.0 5.6
(54,000) (75,000) (120,000) (35,000)
(9.2) (12.8) (20.2) (6.1)
(58,000) (81,000) (127,000) (38,000)