NEW YORK (AP) -- The news keeps getting worse for CBS' struggling "Early Show."
A week after getting a bad first quarter ratings report -- and a spate of embarrassing publicity to go with it -- the morning news show sank to its lowest viewership levels yet."The Early Show" with Bryant Gumbel and Jane Clayson had an average of 2.2 million viewers last week, its smallest audience since debuting to much fanfare in November.
CBS spent a reported $30 million to build a new studio that looks out over Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, enticed former "Today" show host Gumbel back to morning television, and revamped and renamed its old morning news show.
Yet viewership for "The Early Show" last week was 22 percent lower than the audience the show it replaced had a year ago, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The three network morning shows all had a smaller audience last week than during the first three months of the year, since viewership tends to drop in the spring and summer months. But both NBC's "Today" show and ABC's "Good Morning America" are running ahead of last year's numbers.
The frontrunning "Today" had 5.9 million viewers last week, a 6 percent increase over 1999, and the surging "Good Morning America" had 4.6 million, up 20 percent from last year.
Despite published reports that some CBS affiliates are getting anxious about the poor performance of "The Early Show," a CBS spokeswoman said Friday the network remained strongly behind it and no major changes were planned.
"The feeling at CBS News is the broadcast is journalistically strong," spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said. "Bryant and Jane are developing a nice chemistry. We knew from the start that this broadcast would take time to see a significant uptick in the ratings."
During the first three months of 2000, ratings for "The Early Show" were 14 percent below its predecessor the year before, and below what the network promised its advertisers would be delivered. That means CBS had to give money back to advertisers or compensate them with free commercials.
Gumbel has also been buffeted with bad publicity, particularly in the New York area, stemming from a nasty divorce case.