The News Glut: Film at 11 . . . and 10 and 9 . . . : Television: There are newscasts all over the dial, but network viewership is declining.

News, news and more news--Los Angeles television viewers have never had more choices, more newscasts, more hours of the day in which to get their fill of the day’s events. As a result, fewer local residents are tuning to the three network-owned stations that traditionally have provided the bulk of local TV news.

Total viewership of the daily 5 p.m. newscasts on KCBS Channel 2, KNBC Channel 4 and KABC-TV Channel 7 during February was down 12% from the same month in 1989--even though the size of the local audience had grown. The cumulative audience for newscasts on those stations was also down 3% at 4 p.m. and at 6 p.m. Combined Nielsen ratings at 11 p.m. were the same as last year but off 21% from February, 1988.

“I have a feeling that people are just sated with it,” said Dan Gingold, assistant professor of broadcast journalism at USC and a former news producer at Channel 2. “There’s just too much of it--and by the very fact that there is so much, it tends to be repetitive and rather unsatisfying unless there is a major story, like an earthquake. . . . It’s like eating too many jelly beans--you lose your taste for it after awhile.”

Robert Hyland, general manager at KCBS, would not call last month’s sharp drop “a trend,” but he acknowledged that the abundance of broadcast news outlets in Southern California--CNN, four major independent stations, two Spanish-language TV stations, two all-news radio stations, National Public Radio, Financial News Network, plus the tabloid or “softer” news programs “Hard Copy,” “A Current Affair” and “Entertainment Tonight”--”may have diluted some of the numbers.”

“There are so many choices today,” Hyland said. “TV used to be predictable. Viewers watched local news, then network news and then the network prime-time schedule. Now you need a magnifying glass to read the TV Guide. And viewers don’t have loyalty anymore to a network or a station--they graze through the schedule each hour and pick out a sitcom or news or ESPN or whatever they want.”

The increasing entertainment choices on cable and the increasing strength of the counterprogramming on the independent stations have also contributed to the erosion of the local news audience in the afternoon and at 11 p.m. So has the declining prime-time ratings of the three stations’ parent networks--down 8% in February compared to February, 1989.

Local news observers also speculate that the newscasts on Channels 2, 4 and 7 have become indistinguishable, filled increasingly with inconsequential features. In the past, these observers say, highly promoted, sensationalized “mini-docs” served to differentiate the stations during ratings sweeps periods, but those produced last month were far tamer than previous years.

“There just isn’t enough local news--especially since national and international news are mostly ignored--to fill all of those hours,” said Steve Bell, general manager of KTLA Channel 5, whose top-rated 10 p.m. newscast has not been plagued by audience defections. “And as the stations realized this, they more and more desperately tried to manufacture news and, as a result, they watered down their own product. The public isn’t fooled. They have simply grown weary of all this and are taking advantage of all the alternatives.”

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the audience that used to watch news has gone, because local ratings for all cable channels were unavailable. But nationally, basic cable has increased its viewership about 18% in the last year. And KTLA’s reruns of “Hunter,” which Bell claims is stealing adult viewers from the news, won the 6-7 p.m. time period last month, beating local and national news as well as sitcoms on the three other independents.

The network-owned stations already have cut back their news programming. Where once they each offered three hours of news in the afternoon, today only KABC-TV continues to do so--and it plans to eliminate half an hour this fall.

Bell predicted that both Channel 7 and Channel 4 would junk their 4 p.m. news if ratings continue to slide. Though the stations generally are eager to crow about good ratings news, the general managers at both Channel 4 and Channel 7 declined to comment for this article.

John Severino, formerly the general manager of KABC Channel 7 and a former president of ABC Television, said that the drop in viewership at the network affiliates is occuring all over the country as the networks’ share of the audience declines.

When he was at ABC in the early 1980s, he recalled, he would travel to the affiliates and assure them that the three-network share of prime time would never drop below 90%. “A few months later,” he said, “we would tell them it would never drop below 85%. Then we would go around and say never below 80%. Now it’s down to 65%, and I heard Bob Wright (president of NBC) say recently that it could fall to 55%.”

Severino, who now is president of the Prime Ticket cable sports network, said that the decreasing network audience means fewer people are available to watch promos for the affiliate stations’ newscasts. That, coupled with the increasing strength of the independents and the growth of cable, means fewer news viewers.

This fall, Prime Ticket will provide even more competition for the network-owned stations when it premieres two daily, all-sports newscasts at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Even with the drop in ratings, however, news still remains enormously lucrative for these stations, Severino said. They can live with lower ratings because of cuts in expenditures demanded a few years back when new owners took over the parent corporations--Laurence Tisch at CBS, General Electric at NBC and Capital Cities at ABC.

“Years ago, when profits were so high, we could add staff every year,” KCBS’ Hyland recalled. “With the market share shrinking, we can’t do that. Everyone has had to cut back. We’re all in a lean and mean mode.”

Hyland maintained that the cuts have not hurt the quality of the product, but Bell contended that the stations simply may no longer have the resources to adequately fill all those hours of news every day.

Though Severino said that he does not believe the stations will cut their news expenditures any further--and that they may in fact have to increase their advertising and promotion budgets--he thinks that one of the stations will have to try something radically different to distinguish it from the other two. If they all continue to look the same and report the same news, he said, the decline will continue indefinitely.

Hyland said that much depends on what the networks program in prime time. Last year, CBS aired the blockbuster miniseries “Lonesome Dove” in February, and that helped draw viewers to local news following the entertainment programs. Last month, there were no smash hits on any of the networks.

“When the network share goes up, obviously viewers are sampling your station and it is easier to get them to sample the news,” Hyland said. “When there is a big show at 10 p.m., you can sell your newscast during that program and people will be willing to hang in there. We’re all fighting like hell to give our station some brand awareness, but when the viewer has 40 choices every half hour, it’s getting more and more difficult to do that.”