COLUMN ONE : Morning TV Shows Go Local : For 40 years, networks have given the nation a daily meeting place to exchange gossip, hear news, get a sales pitch. Fragmenting society and technology may end that.

When NBC President Sylvester (Pat) Weaver invented “The Today Show” in 1952, he dreamed of electronics making the newest and best in the world accessible each day to average people: technology as a democratizing force.

“The Communicator (or host) will pick up the telephone,” one of Weaver’s early memos read, “and there will be Moscow with instantaneous pictures from the Russian capital coming in over the wires. This man will be the news center of the world.”

Nearly 40 years later, “The Today Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning” are the most enduring examples of how television has traditionally functioned to create shared experiences.

In a sense, morning television shows are a fragmenting society’s last central town market, the meeting place Americans go to each day to find what’s new--a little news, some gossip, the weather, a look at the day ahead, and a good deal of selling things--from movies to products to political views.

Like nothing else in the rapidly changing world of television, the morning shows continue to exist on the presumption that there is a national mass culture common to all Americans.

But now there are some signs that this last national central market could be on the brink of splintering, a further sign of the fragmentation of American culture. Technology is making it possible to replace the national meeting place with a local one.

In New Orleans, for instance, WWL’s “Eyewitness Morning News” lures more than half of all people watching television--nearly five times the closest network show--by focusing on the concerns and people of The Big Easy.

In New York City, Fox’s “Good Day New York” beats both “The Today Show” and “CBS This Morning” by making the sights and sounds of the city a major “character” on the program.

“This is a very viable threat to these national forums,” said Eric Sorenson, executive producer of the “CBS Evening News” and former head of “CBS This Morning.” “Anyone working on these programs has to be worried about it. I don’t think it is fatal, but it will open up some wounds.”

Already the network shows have lost audience to local news programs that begin earlier in the morning--a result of a trend in which Americans are going to bed and waking up earlier. These early morning news shows are the fastest growing area for TV viewing among working women.

“Morning viewing is up, but (morning) network is down,” says Alan Wurtzel, senior vice president of marketing and research at ABC.

As a result, most network executives agree that their morning shows will have to give up more time than the current 5 minutes an hour to stations for local content. Others suggest that the networks, strapped by rising costs, will have to soon adopt cheaper formulas, perhaps based more on the personal chemistry of the cast rather than more expensive coverage from outside the studio. And some warn that network shows are vulnerable because they have grown too similar, leaving room for local competition.

For all this, however, the morning shows remain a remarkable mirror on the nation’s culture. “The Today Show,” now nearly 40, is the second oldest program on television after “Meet the Press” and the most consistently profitable in history.

According to ratings, roughly 30% of Americans still watch one of the network shows each week. That is about 75% of all those watching TV between 7 and 9 a.m.

And since two-thirds of the audience turns over--producers estimate most people watch just 15 to 30 minutes--the total number who see part of a show each day may actually be two or three times this.

Emphasis on Sound

As originally conceived by Weaver, the morning shows would not be television really at all. People in the morning are not sitting and watching; they are making the bed, getting dressed, eating breakfast. So “The Today Show” was produced more as radio, and still is, with each segment narrated in such a way that it can be heard without being seen.

And the shows would serve several audiences at once. They would update news since the night before, arm people going to work with information and gossip and be an entertaining companion, particularly later in the show, to those staying at home.

To accomplish this, Weaver was the first to merge entertainment with news, talk and information with an ensemble cast--an “energizing program service . . . sugar-coated and . . . (well) paced,” as he described it in one memo.

At the time that was written, television’s fourth year, the network news took up just 15 minutes a night and would continue to do so through another decade.

Although few noticed, to a large degree the morning formula became the model for local TV news shows and eventually for the gradual blending of news and entertainment values that now prevails in network news.

What resulted was a show that--more than any other on television--defined the parameters of popular culture in a single program. In the course of 18 minutes, for instance, a recent “Good Morning America” moved from former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to pop singer Madonna to retiring CIA Director William H. Webster.

“During the commercial break,” recalls “Good Morning America” co-host Charlie Gibson, “I said to Judge Webster, ‘I must apologize to you somewhat for the priorities.’ ”

“Oh, no,” Webster answered, “you’ve got the priorities just about right.”

Priorities Change

Those cultural priorities have changed over time. The happy-go-lucky “Today Show” of the 1950s--featuring a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs--gave way to a more serious and erudite program in the 1960s under the control of the news division.

After premiering in 1975, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” featuring humorist Erma Bombeck and Hollywood gossip Rona Barrett, quickly became No. 1 by aiming softer content at women. And In the 1980s “Today” regained the No. 1 spot by capitalizing on new live satellite technology and appealing to people’s appetite for news that would help them at work.

Now, current network research suggests, a busier population wants news they can use--cooking, gardening, home repair, and above all health and fitness.

Throughout, the shows have had a kind of innocence--where else would Willard Scott’s birthday greetings endure? “People have to accept us into their homes before they’d let in their best friends--before they’ve done their hair and when the kids are at their brattiest,” says ABC’s Gibson.

But recently, technology and culture have begun to force important changes. While a good portion of the shows always involved selling things, in recent years, “the people doing the selling have become much more sophisticated,” “Today Show” host Bryant Gumbel concedes.

“It is the dark underbelly of morning TV that almost everybody who appears on these shows has an agent or PR firm who in some ways is negotiating to manipulate the audience, the program and some point of view--and that includes politicians,” said Sorenson of CBS.

Gumbel says “the multiplicity of outlets” in the form of such spinoff programs as “Oprah Winfrey” to “Hard Copy” to “Entertainment Tonight,” “has increased (the) leverage” of those doing the selling. “And that is a real problem.”

Hollywood publicity agents today even negotiate quid pro quo deals, requiring shows to accept appearances from lesser-known actors in exchange for getting the big names.

Offers for time on one show also are typically taken to other shows and bargained up. The result is that as a condition of their appearing, many stars and movies get multiple days on the air.

“We are getting used, and we are going to get out of this competition,” said former “Today Show” Executive Producer Tom Capra.

Another change is that politicians, once loath to lower themselves to do morning television, began to appear. Political consultants say a key reason is that in the early 1980s Ronald Reagan Administration officials, increasingly accustomed to appearing on a growing number of syndicated and cable political talk programs, began to make themselves more available.

Now, for politicians who want to put their own “spin” or interpretation on events, “The morning shows have really evolved into the best spin vehicle available,” said Michael Sheehan, a Democratic media consultant.

Following that example, everything from space shuttle launches, Oscar and Emmy nominations to pronouncements from Baghdad during the Gulf War are timed to be carried live on the morning shows.

Today, other cultural and technological changes are forcing the morning shows to re-examine their role even more. One of those changes, says NBC’s vice president for research, Bob Niles, was made because Americans are going to bed and getting up earlier. Morning news now begins as early as 5:30 a.m., where 10 years ago the day still began at 7 a.m.

“In a few years the early morning news before 7 a.m. will be a more important time period than the news at 11 p.m.,” said Eric Braun, with the television consulting firm Frank Magid Associates.

And this early morning news will be local, not national. Even though the networks produce early news programs--NBC’s “News at Sunrise” and ABC’s “World News This Morning”--local stations air their own news instead in much of the country, or push the network news to earlier time slots--5:30 or 6:00 a.m.

This already has forced some change in the morning show formats. “It is no longer as important that we tell people what is happening, but we need to combine it now with more analysis and interpretation,” said ABC’s research vice president, Wurtzel.

Probably the most important example of the fragmenting of the morning audience is the rise of local shows that challenge the venerated “Today Show” time slot head on.

This began about five years ago when the CBS affiliate in New Orleans launched “Eyewitness Morning News” in place of “CBS This Morning.” Now, the New Orleans show, which airs from 6 to 8 a.m., commands an astonishing 64% share of all TV viewers its first hour and 52% share the second--a dominance of the time period no network show anywhere can claim.

In Greensboro, N.C., the local “Good Morning Show” has nearly double the ratings of the closest network competitor. When, at 8 a.m., it goes off the air and the “CBS This Morning” comes on, ratings fall by half.

And in Miami, the local show on WSVN rivals ABC and beats CBS and NBC.

One reason these shows can exist is that starting in the mid 1980s they could get national and international news from CNN, and later from their network affiliate feeds. To this, they add something the networks cannot--local traffic, news and personalities.

Inspired by their example, three years ago Fox began exploring the local alternative in New York, at WNYW. Using the city as its stage, CNN for national and international news, and its own staff for local traffic, weather and local news, “Good Day New York” has seen ratings steadily rise since its launch in August, 1988. Now it is No. 2 to “Good Morning America” in the latest ratings.

The Fox show that is tailored for Washington, in contrast to the one in New York, is more serious and more oriented to politics and government than the network shows. Launched a year ago, it is about even with the No. 3-rated CBS program and on occasion has tied NBC. Fox is now also producing a similar program in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In Los Angeles, the six-month-old KTLA “Morning News” specializes in helicopter shots of traffic and weather updates every eight minutes. It is too soon to judge the show’s appeal.

Some at the networks, such as CBS research head David Poltrack, believe only stations in a handful of large cities have enough going on and enough resources to launch local competition.

But at least some in television are not so quick to discount the possibility. Producer Therese Cehrt in New Orleans says authors and celebrities now conduct press “tours” by satellite without traveling, and she buys segments such as consumer reports from independent production companies.

Economics also will push local stations to do their own shows, said John Quarderer, director of TV research at Frank Magid Associates. Local stations will earn more money than they do with network programs and will also help build the station’s other local news shows by developing loyalty to the station.

“Our research has indicated over a fairly lengthy period of time, certainly throughout the last decade, that the news audience was slowly but surely reaching the conclusion that their local station was fully capable of providing the news that previously was the stuff that only the networks could do.”

Format Under Fire

There are already pressures on the standard morning show format, forcing what some consider to be already visible tension and experimentation in the shows.

Former “Today Show” Executive Producer Steve Friedman, for one, thinks the three network shows are now too similar in content and style, and he expects one network to significantly redesign its show soon.

Money pressures at the networks are also causing some network officials to look for changes in format.

Jeffrey Zucker, the newly appointed executive producer of “The Today Show,” says “one of the most successful shows on television is Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford.” The show is inexpensive to produce, since it avoids costly satellites for news gathering and mostly emphasizes the personal chemistry of the show’s stars. A good deal of time is spent having Philbin squirm while Gifford reveals details of her private life with her husband, Frank, or the toilet habits of her baby, Cody.

Not long ago, Zucker had “Today” try to imitate that spirit by following Gumbel while he shaved and co-host Katie Couric while she did her makeup before the show.

Some at the networks are afraid that an overemphasis on cast “chemistry” could backfire. These shows have endured, they say, by following Weaver’s vision of always serving an essential function of mixing the entertainment with the information and news that best help people get ready for the day. But ratings for “The Today Show” are rising again.

Many network executives also agree that the shows will have to involve a much larger component of local news than the five minutes out of each hour that Weaver conceived of 40 years ago.

“I could see these shows getting longer, going 6 to 9 a.m. and incorporating more local time,” says ABC’s Wurtzel.

If local competition intensifies, could the network morning shows ultimately vanish? Most observers, like Roberta Dougherty, the editorial producer of “Good Morning America,” fervently believe not.

“At the same time that there is more fragmentation--with Hispanics rioting against blacks in Washington, D.C., and special interest paralysis in Congress--there is also more of a global village,” she said. “Twenty-four hours after Norman Schwarzkopf makes his first appearance, he is a familiar member of the American family.”

Still, “Today Show” host Gumbel has no doubt change is coming. “We are dealing with a market that is increasingly specialized,” he said. Morning shows are losing share, “and we are going to have to find new and different ways to address a changing audience.”