3-Hour Newscast Nets Respectable Ratings : Channel 9’s 3-Hour Newscast Debuts With Respectable Ratings

With a 14-minute report on the death of Loyola Marymount basketball star Hank Gathers leading the charge, KCAL Channel 9 launched the first regularly scheduled, three-hour, prime-time local newscast in television history Monday night, and viewers tuned in for it in respectable numbers. At least for the first two hours.

The three-hour broadcast averaged a 4 rating (each point represents 49,315 homes) and attracted 6% of the available audience, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co., while Arbitron measured the three hours at 3.1 with a 5 share. During last month’s ratings sweeps, the Disney-owned station averaged about a 3 rating with the half-hour newscasts it was offering at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Curiousity tune-in for the much ballyhooed premiere propelled the station to an astonishingly high 8.2 rating and 12% share of the audience for the first 15 minutes of the newscast Monday. After the Gathers profile, however, nearly 150,000 households tuned out, and the hour wound up averaging a 5.7 rating.

The station’s 9 p.m. newscast scored a 4 rating, while the 10 p.m. broadcast, which faced direct news competition from Channels 5, 11 and 13, came in last with a 2.3 rating and only 4% of the audience.

“I don’t care about the ratings,” Blake Byrne, KCAL’s general manager, said Tuesday, disdaining the opportunity to gloat about the station’s ratings performance. “One day does not make the world. And ratings--we’re not selling it on ratings. We’re selling it on concept and on quality.”

Competitors cautioned that the good ratings for the newscast on the first night could probably be attributed to audience curiousity. In addition, they noted, ratings for KTLA Channel 5 were down from a normal night because of a Los Angeles Clippers game that the local team lost badly. While KTLA averaged about a 7 rating during February between 8 and 8:30 p.m., the end of the Clippers game earned less than a 1 rating for that same time period Monday--a difference of nearly 300,000 homes.

Nevertheless, Channel 5 still won the head-to-head news race at 10 p.m., with KTTV Channel 11 a close second, KCOP Channel 13 third and KCAL fourth.