NETWORK AUDIENCE CLIMBS : LOSERS TAKE HEART IN THE RATINGS RESULTS

Even though it was NBC that won the prime-time ratings race, there was good news for ABC and CBS in the end-of-the-season figures that the A.C. Nielsen Co. released this week. For the first time in nine years, the networks did not lose any ground to their competitors in the battle for viewer attention.

In fact, they actually drew more viewers than they did in the preceding year.

That led some network executives Wednesday to challenge the commonly held notion that the networks will continue for at least several more years to lose viewers to competing TV delivery systems, such as independent stations, cable TV, pay TV and videocassette recorders.

“I think that wisdom is subject to serious question. I think you can make a case that you’re going to see the networks increasing in audience over the next couple of years,” Bill Rubens, vice president of research at NBC, said in an interview.

“I think we’ve stemmed the tide at this point on the erosion we’ve seen over the past few years,” echoed Roy Rothstein, vice president of research at ABC.

But an official at the Cable Television Advertising Bureau disputed that interpretation, saying the networks were basing their assessments on a good performance in only one quarter. He predicted that they will continue to see their audience share dwindle.

During the 30-week season that ended Sunday, the three networks combined to attract about 77% of the prime-time audience--the same as last year. In the preceding eight seasons, faced with growing competition, both their combined rating and share of the audience had declined steadily.

By maintaining their audience share this season, the networks actually registered a gain in viewership, because Nielsen estimates that there are about one million more homes with television this year compared to last.

Thus, the networks’ prime-time programming this season had an average audience of 42.1 million homes. Last season, they averaged 41.1 million--down nearly 900,000 from 1983-84.

All of the gain went to NBC, as both CBS and ABC suffered ratings losses over the preceding year. But the fact that the combined networks ratings went up instead of down “is good news for all three of us,” ABC’s Rothstein said.

“The fact that people are dissatisfied with the alternative product is what’s drawing them back,” he declared in an interview. “They may have been dissatisfied with us a few years ago, but they’re finding that the alternatives are not any better and probably worse than the networks.”

Rubens agreed, saying that Nielsen figures for cable TV for the same 30-week network season showed most of the national programming services--including Home Box Office, MTV and ESPN--suffering ratings declines. Nor do independent stations seem to have done as well this season as last, he said.

David Gill, manager of media services for the Cable Television Advertising Bureau, countered that the networks’ audience gains this season actually were achieved during the fourth quarter of 1985, offsetting a decline during the first quarter of this year. “The fact that they had one good quarter is not an indication of the fact that they’re turning things around,” he contended.

Arnold Becker, vice president of research at CBS, was not as optimistic as his counterparts in interpreting this season’s ratings. “It has not been a good season for the network competitors. At a minimum, HBO and the other cable guys are not growing,” he said. “Whether that’s because of our great efforts or because they screwed up, I’m not sure.”

Like Gill, Becker said that he expected the networks’ audience share to slip again in the coming years. As cable continues to grow, particularly in major cities where it is not yet widely available, it is inevitable that ABC, CBS and NBC will lose some viewers, he argued.

CBS still holds to its prediction of several years ago that the decline eventually will level off at about a 70% audience share for the three major commercial networks, Becker said.