COMMENTARY : Confessions of Ratings Chaser

In 1978, when I was news director of KNBC Channel 4 and right smack in the midst of crucial February rating sweeps, I issued a staff memo on the distinctions between “illegal aliens,” “undocumented workers” and “undocumented aliens.” And in November, 1978, though it was also a sweeps month, I wrote to one of my producers chiding him for a script confusing Woodland Hills with Canoga Park.

With priorities like that, it’s no wonder that, a couple of years later, my boss explained that I had been fired because I lacked the right stuff to be a “news director for the ‘80s.”

In fact, newspaper accounts of my dismissal went so far as to describe me as “respected and responsible” and as a “traditional-style journalist who has resisted some of the colorful trends found on other newscasts.”

At the time, I appreciated such tributes to my journalistic purity. I had refused to mud-wrestle my competitors for ratings. I had turned Show Biz away at the newsroom door. What a good boy was I!

Well, it’s 1988 and another February sweeps is winding down (it ends Wednesday). And I, smug and snug in my cloak of respectability, was all set to denounce what local TV news won’t do for ratings these days. Surely, “pandering” and “titillation” would understate the case.

But then I started looking into my files and cross-checking my recollections and I discovered that I had no right to cast the first or any other stone. This is my confession:

During the sweeps of February, 1978, we broadcast series on “gambling,” “unemployed actors,” “teen-age pregnancy” and “sex on TV.” (“Find out everything you ever wanted to know about sex and television,” promised our ads, sweepingly.)

During the sweeps of November, 1978--when I was supposedly so concerned about the correct location of Canoga Park--Channel 4 educated its viewers on such newsworthy matters as long-distance running, radio disc jockeys, the role of the Beverly Hills Hotel in the movie “California Suite” and sex therapy.

And in November, 1980--as I was about to give way to a “news director for the ‘80s” at Channel 4--my farewell included how to get on a TV game show, why the county morgue was filled to capacity with murder victims, the vanishing landmarks of Los Angeles and everything you wanted to know about bicycles.

In fact, some of the most frequently recycled sweeps topics--such as adoption, sexual harassment, working women, earthquake prediction, trauma care, psychics and Olympic hopefuls--appeared for the first time ever back in the ‘70s on Channel 4. (Dr. Art Ulene did a series on backaches for us in November, 1977; he did one for Channel 7 only a couple of weeks ago. I guess that’s what they mean by “recurring.”)

I don’t know whether to be proud or apologetic about all this.

Nowadays, sweeps subjects are sometimes picked by market researchers, advertising agencies and other such journalistically unsavory characters. Not on my watch! Everything connected with sweeps required my OK, up to and including the advertising and promotion copy.

In 1977, when station management asked our advertising agency for advice on how to improve our demographics, it came up with a list of topics of most interest to women 18 to 49: sex, relationships, fitness, diets, fashion, careers, life style, marriage, family and children.

The idea was for the news department to concentrate more of our sweeps efforts on those areas, but our response to the ad people was to “get out of our hair” and “mind your own business.” You know, like the constitutional separation of church and state.

Whereupon we went and did series on sex, relationships, fitness, diets and most of the rest.

But now for the exculpatory part. It was the competition that made me do it.

In 1978, Channel 2 (which had been cutting back on its news programming on the grounds that the market was oversaturated with the stuff), suddenly expanded its early-evening news from one hour to 2 1/2. In November that year, its sweeps topics ran from sterilization to “children who kill.”

And Channel 7, proclaiming that “there’s more to life than news, weather and sports,” proved its sincerity with reports on soap operas and romance novels--not to mention an exclusive interview with John Wayne.

So I plead self-defense. And I have witnesses to testify that my sweeps record as news director of Channel 4 also included the controversy over electroshock therapy, the effects of Prop. 13, nuclear safety, toxic waste and school desegregation.

But what could I do? Do you know what it’s like to schedule a sweeps series on physical fitness only to find that, during the same week and at the same hour, Channel 7 was asking, “Is your kid into drugs or sex?”