Long adrift, ABC News now sinks

It was just one week.

But when ABC’s “World News Tonight” -- whose viewership already has dropped by nearly 1 million people in the last year -- slipped behind the perennially third-ranked “CBS Evening News” in the ratings last week, it was more than just a blow to morale.

It was, according to some inside the network, a sobering and frustrating reminder of the internal tug-of-war that has stalled the newscast’s efforts to recast itself after the death of anchor Peter Jennings and the serious wounds suffered by one of his successors in Iraq nearly four months ago.

Bob Woodruff is undergoing rehabilitation and is determined to return to the job, but it remains unclear when he will be able to do so. Initially, news officials said they were developing an interim plan for the program. But despite widespread expectations that the network was on the verge of announcing a new partner for Elizabeth Vargas weeks ago -- with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Charles Gibson increasingly seen as the likely candidate -- nothing has happened.

The main sticking point, according to people familiar with the situation, has been a reluctance to upend the second-place morning show, which some executives believe has a shot at taking on NBC’s “Today” after Katie Couric leaves at the end of this month. ABC’s dilemma has spotlighted a reality with which every network news division must grapple: Morning shows bring in substantially more ad revenue than the evening news programs, even though the latter are viewed as the flagship broadcasts.

ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine declined to comment on any internal discussions. “When we have an announcement to make, we’ll make it,” she said.

The delay has forced “World News Tonight” producers to essentially abandon a new initiative to offer updated West Coast editions of the newscast and plans to send the new anchor duo on high-profile trips. Even though Vargas has been effectively serving as the first solo female anchor of an evening newscast since Woodruff was injured, the network has made little noise about her tenure, waiting to have a long-term plan in place for the program before marketing it.

The slowness to resolve the situation has mystified outside observers and frustrated ABC News employees, who are still mourning Jennings.

“They feel snake-bit,” said former ABC correspondent Robert Zelnick, chairman of Boston University’s journalism department. “There’s a certain loss of self-confidence. It’s very painful.”

The release of the most recent ratings data last week only increased pressure on ABC to make a move. For the first time since August 2001, CBS topped ABC in the weekly ratings race, garnering an average of 7.39 million viewers to “World News Tonight’s” 7.31 million, according to Nielsen Media Research. CBS is up an average of 280,000 viewers this season, while ABC is down 940,000, a drop of 10%. (Top-ranked “NBC Nightly News” has also seen its audience shrink, losing 680,000 viewers.)

Jon Banner, executive producer of “World News Tonight,” noted that CBS had won just one week’s worth of ratings but acknowledged that he wished the ABC broadcast was drawing a larger audience.

“We want to be doing much better than we are, and we should be doing much better than we are given the talent pool here,” he said. “This broadcast has been through hell here in the past year and several months. I don’t think any broadcast can go through those events without it impacting the performance, and I think it’s caught up to us.”

News of the CBS victory broke Tuesday in the middle of the broadcast television upfronts, a series of elaborate events held here to entice advertisers to commit money to next season’s prime-time shows. On the same day, ABC News employees learned that one of the network’s two newsmagazines, “Primetime,” wasn’t given a regular spot on the fall schedule. (News President David Westin assured the staff that he expected the program would get a permanent time slot later in the season.)

At the ABC party that evening, held in a lavishly decorated tent outside Lincoln Center, upbeat entertainment executives gaily chatted up advertisers about the fall schedule and the success of programs like “Grey’s Anatomy” while their news colleagues watched the festivities morosely, having little to celebrate.

“Morale is starting to suffer,” said one news division staffer who discussed internal matters on condition of anonymity. “People would like to see a decision made one way or another. This person is supposed to be the public face of the network to the world. People are wondering, ‘When are we finally going to have a captain of the ship?’ ”

Banner declined to comment on the plans for replacing Woodruff, saying only, “Those decisions are being dealt with.”

Some observers hope that the needs of the evening news eventually prevail over any reluctance to shake up the profitable “Good Morning America.”

“Despite the fact that the morning show rakes in far more money, it’s still the evening news that defines the network’s news priorities,” Boston University’s Zelnick said. “As long as you’re a hard news organization that has to be ready on a moment’s notice to cover a Sept. 11 or another cataclysmic event, you need that evening news show as that defining program of your news organization.”

ABC officials don’t have that much longer to figure out how to balance the competing interests. Vargas, whose second child is due in August, is expected to go on maternity leave earlier that month.