The State of the Network News Business : Despite Declining Ratings, Increasing Competition, Counter-Programming and Shifting Time Slots, the Evening Newscasts Are Far From Extinct

The good news for network evening newscasts is that few in broadcasting think they’ll eventually go the way of the pterodactyl. And the ramifications for them of the new people-meter ratings system are “nil,” as one research expert puts it.

“The future of network (evening) news is alive and well,” sums up NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.

But how well is open to debate when the yardstick is the ratings for the “CBS Evening News,” ABC’s “World News Tonight” and the “NBC Nightly News.”

Their days of dominance have clearly waned, primarily because of the new era of competition from cable TV (including Cable News Network), independent stations, the videocassette recorder and even the more than 600 affiliated stations of CBS, NBC and ABC.

The network newscasts hit their peak in the 1981-82 season, when they had a combined 39.3 rating, which means they were seen in more than 32 million homes. Then began a decline that has continued despite a comeback in the 1985-86 season.

Last season, the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts combined to attract, on the average, about 30.2 million homes. The most recent season-to-date ratings for the current season--as of Dec. 20--show a three-network average of just over 29 million homes.

It may be whistling in the dark, but some network news executives, notably CBS News President Howard Stringer, think there may be a bottoming-out of this decline, possibly by the end of this season in April.

The reasons for the ratings drop “are fairly clear,” says Stringer, whose “CBS Evening News” itself suffered a decline to third place this summer but now is in first place again in season-to-date averages.

All three network newscasts, he notes, face the same competitive problems as the prime-time network entertainment shows--rival syndicated shows and reruns airing both on independent stations and network affiliates.

“In the ‘70s, you didn’t counter-program (network) news with sitcoms and game shows,” he says. And, he adds, it’s “less common” now that network newscasts directly compete against each other in many cities.

“They are counter-programmed by something else. So as the competition gets fiercer out there, not only is the competition directly against the evening news stronger, the affiliates move the evening news into less dominant positions,” Stringer says.

“As the (network) evening news gets moved from 7 p.m. to 6:30 to 6 and to 5:30 p.m., in some instances, the viewing levels go down. So it’s really kind of a victim of the whole ratings wars at all levels of television.”

But all this shuffling and counter-programming must eventually face diminishing returns, and “I think when that happens, there’ll be some bottoming-out” of the ratings drop for network newscasts, Stringer suggests.

Stringer and CBS News anchorman Dan Rather--who has declined interviews since the new season began--had an uneasy summer this year when the once-dominant “CBS Evening News” slipped into third place.

That occurred during a break-in period of the A. C. Nielsen Co. people-meter ratings system, when the company’s old system of meters and household diaries still was in use as the primary form of audience measurement.

During that time, CBS News officials, while privately nervous, steadfastly insisted publicly that the early people-meter returns showed Rather ahead and that he would be a contender come the new season.

They were proved right when people meters fully succeeded the old system of national audience estimates in mid-September.

According to the Nielsens, Rather’s program has been No. 1 in ratings since the new season began on Sept. 21, winning for 13 consecutive weeks. The “NBC Nightly News,” which led the pack in the summer, has gone the other way. Although it edged out ABC’s “World News Tonight” in the week ending Dec. 20 to win second place by a tenth of a ratings point, it nonetheless is third--also by a tenth of a ratings point--in season-to-date averages.

It’s too early to say what this portends, says NBC research chief Bill Rubens, who in an October interview contended that the new system has what he considers statistical “anomalies.”

He admitted that “we don’t understand” the factors contributing to the ratings drop of “Nightly News” and says the Nielsen data needs more study before any conclusions can be drawn.

But he said the ramifications of the new system for network newscasts “are nil,” despite reports and speculation that people meters will lead to a further drop in ratings for the three newscasts.

All three network news divisions, facing the new competition, are mulling how their evening newscasts should look and what they should do in the future. No clear picture has emerged yet.

“I don’t think they are an endangered species,” says one veteran network news executive who requested anonymity. However, he says, satellite technology has markedly changed the way things work.

Because of that technology, local stations now are able to get pictures and reports on breaking national and international news sometimes hours before the network newscasts air them.

And that, he notes, “obviously is provoking great concern about what is our role.”

Seeking possible answers, NBC in 1986 commissioned an in-house research project called “The News Mission Study,” which from July 8 through Aug. 3 last year polled 1,625 viewers in 30 markets from New York to Florence, Ala.

Its major finding: Viewers of both local and network news programs at night “don’t want news program roles to change.” More viewers, the study said, “want to see national and international news on their network newscasts than on their local newscasts. . . .”

And, the study said, “a substantial majority want to see more local coverage on their local newscasts.”

NBC research chief Rubens, discussing the study in an interview this month, says it concludes that the role of network evening newscasts is to “give broader background” on the major stories that are aired each night.

The idea, he says, should be to “explain the news of the day, to interpret it and put it into conext.”

That differs from the past, when he says, “the networks would cover more stories in less depth.”

No radical change is expected in the look of network newscasts. Radical change could misfire, which would be very bad indeed--with just one ratings point in network news competition worth almost $5 million annually, according to a knowledgeable network source.

As one network insider explains it: “It will be a slow evolution, because the stakes are so high nobody’s going to be the first to break the mold.”

There is disagreement on what lies ahead.

NBC’s Brokaw predicts that nightly newscasts “will become much less a diary of the day’s events and more a kind of analysis of what has happened and why. The story count will be smaller.”

But ABC News anchor Peter Jennings doesn’t think there’ll necessarily be more analysis on his “World News Tonight” in the future, or that it’ll become a 22-minute edition of PBS’ “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”

“I hope,” he says, “that we’ll gradually get to more vigorously stay with the big national and international stories. Local television does a good job with the other stuff.”

Tom Bettag, executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” doesn’t think the fewer-stories-more-analysis approach lies ahead for his broadcast, either.

True, he now uses what he calls a SWAT-team system, putting veteran correspondents Bruce Morton and Bob Schieffer on the program on alternate weeks to briefly discuss with anchor Dan Rather the major story of each day.

That opens up the show slightly, but “basically we’re the same” program as in recent years, he said, and “what we have to be is the best-edited broadcast” and “try to be reasonably comprehensive” and clear.

According to one top industry executive, one thing network newsies needn’t worry about is that local TV news operations, now able to use satellites and go national and global in their coverage, threaten the future of network newscasts.

“I think that . . . has been vastly exaggerated in terms of it being a threat to the networks,” says Jim Snyder, a former reporter, local news director and CBS News producer during the early years of Walter Cronkite’s reign as anchor of “The CBS Evening News.”

Now vice president for news at Post-Newsweek Stations Inc., whose four stations all are network affiliates, Snyder recalled that news teams from 13 local stations showed up to cover the U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Geneva two years ago.

“I was amazed how many network people saw that as a sign that the local stations were out to make network news shows extraneous,” he says. “That’s not why they were there at all.

“They were there to be competitive with their local competitors,” he explains, meaning the stations back home, not the networks.

That pattern continues, he adds, and now that the excitement of satellite technology is settling down, the ambitions and coverage of local stations seems to be regional, not international or even national.

But the networks should realize that to compete in today’s cable-rich marketplace, where a viewer can have up to “15 different information sources,” they need “strong, distinctive” reporters and anchors.

“Television is still a medium that thrives on strong personalities,” he says. The networks would be wise to remember that, he adds, and also to stick to the meat-and-potato basics that generally have been the staple of network evening newscasts.

“At the risk of being called arch-conservative,” Snyder says, “I think most people still watch those programs to find out what the hell happened in the world that day.

“And they have been conditioned by the networks themselves to get their news in that 22-minute package. The networks have to be careful about wandering away from that.

“You can’t come on and say, ‘It’s 1988 now and we can’t do this collection of 114 stories tonight, we’re only going to do two stories, but boy, are we going to give you analysis up the kazoo.’

“You’ll drive your audience away.”