Meters New TV Master

Employees of San Diego television stations will anxiously gather around their station bulletin boards Friday morning, awaiting the dawn of a new era in local television.

Say hello to the Age of Meters.

Nielsen Media Research, the ratings company, has placed meters in 300 households around the county that, beginning Thursday, will automatically record television viewing habits. Commonplace in most major markets, the meters supplement the antiquated diary system, providing stations with daily ratings for the previous day’s shows.

Under the diary system, which still will be employed by Nielsen for quarterly breakdowns of viewer demographics, people have to write down what they watched during the day, which often created some inconsistent and often inexplicable swings in ratings numbers.

The meters will remove much of the guessing in the system.

“You’re measuring behavior instead of memory,” said KNSD-TV (Channel 39) general manager Neil Derrough.

Not only will the meters change the way the local stations do business, they will probably have a profound impact on local programming.

In theory, the stations will get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t by watching the ebbs and flows of the overnight ratings. The meter reports give ratings for every 15 minutes, providing a clear indication when people are tuning in and out.

Eventually, stations might blatantly pander to the meters. All they need to do is get people to tune in for five minutes to register a rating. A station that sees its news ratings slipping might be tempted to toss in a series on the latest bikinis to spice things up.

Instead of going for long-term successes, many stations will be fighting the ratings battle daily. Generic promotions of a station’s image won’t be as effective as timely and topical teases of that evening’s programs, said KFMB-TV (Channel 8) promotions director Tim Hnedak.

“The (news) battleground will be more at 11 than earlier,” said Hnedak. “The most effective ads right before the show comes on will have a lot more control” and impact on ratings.

The daily information will be both a blessing and curse for stations. On the positive side, Channel 39 won’t have to wait until Christmas to find out how it’s new 4 p.m. newscast is faring in the ratings. The downside is that station management might freak out when a program doesn’t debut to solid ratings. Instead of waiting for long-range trends, they will be tempted to make quick changes when the overnight numbers are not strong.

“The problem with meters is that the immediate instinct is to do things quickly, to panic,” Derrough said.

From a programming perspective, there will be some positive aspects.

Stations will no longer be able to simply toss programs into time slots, assuming they will get at least a token rating.

For example, last Monday after Monday Night Football, Channel 10 aired a National Geographic documentary at 10 p.m. Under the diary system, the documentary probably would have gotten a decent number, as would the 11 p.m. news, simply because so many people were watching Channel 10 earlier in the evening.

But the meters pick up when people change channels. A preliminary, unofficial meter report for last Monday showed that the one-hour National Geographic special earned a 4.0 rating and, more importantly, the 11 p.m. news received only a 5.0, placing it well behind both Channels 8 and 10 that night. Stations won’t be able to afford that kind of dropoff.

In general, there will be more pressure on stations to consistently perform.

Derrough pointed to a show like “Third Thursday,” his station’s successful monthly Town Hall program. Under the quarterly diary system, only four editions of the show were measured per year. Now they’ll get reaction and ratings for every show.

“It will absolutely make us have to be as good as we can be every month to keep ‘Third Thursday’ in place,” Derrough said.

The downside of that pressure is that it doesn’t necessarily encourage local programming. Some speculate that even fewer stations will take chances on adventuresome ideas, since the feedback will be immediate and potentially destructive.

The local stations are paying about $1 million a year for the meters, 40% more than for the diary system, and they are not going to take the new information lightly. The move toward joining other major markets in the country by bringing in the meters was led by the independent and lower-rated stations, and they will be hoping to see a different representation of San Diego viewing habits.

The meters should reflect more younger viewers, since it was widely believed that younger people rarely filled out their diaries.

“The diary system of measuring ratings has always been highly suspect,” said Martin Colby, general manager of XETV (Channel 6), which carries the more youth-oriented Fox Television programming. XETV was one of the stations pushing for the meters.

Already, local station executives are buzzing about the information from last week’s preliminary reports. Although the program numbers were skewed by the World Series, the meters are showing more people watching television than the diaries had.

In particular, the meters show higher viewing for late-night and daytime programming than indicated in the diaries, which might lead station executives to spend a little more to find better programs for those slots.

“The late-night viewing was greater than we ever suspected,” Colby said.

Few effets of the meters will be noticed immediately, except at the stations, where employees will find themselves rushing to check the numbers every morning. The blood pressures of station managers will be bounced a few notches.

As much as anything, the meters signal that San Diego is finally becoming a major market, entering the modern world of television, with all the attendant pros and cons.

It may seem unfair to pick on Channel 8, since its newscast last Monday night was fairly typical of how local stations handle national politics, but this is how Channel 8’s 11 p.m. newscast covered world news on the night of the last presidential debate: 40 seconds were spent on the candidates’ actual comments; three minutes, 40 seconds were given to reaction, polls and a feature on Republicans planning to vote for Clinton; two minutes were devoted to a feature on dating in the ‘90s (“Sensitive men with a sense of humor get the nod in the ‘90s,” according to Margaret Radford); layoffs at General Dynamics were worth 20 seconds; and 1 minute, 21 seconds was turned over to an interview with “Northern Exposure” star Janine Turner. . . .

Bernard Gonzales’ last day at KNSD-TV (Channel 39) will be Nov. 5. He’s taken a job with Fox TV, working in Channel 11’s new Orange County bureau. . . .

Word from the halls of Channel 8 is that management has made clear that someone will be hired from outside the area to fill the vacant general manager post. That means radio station chief Paul Palmer, whom many considered to be a leading candidate, is probably out of the running. . . .

Mark last week on the wall calendar: Channel 8’s Ted Leitner actually deigned to do the late-night newscasts. . . .

In the glut of stories about Madonna’s photo book, “Sex,” the best lead-in was offered by Channel 8’s Mitch Duncan: “Well, the foreplay is over, it’s time for ‘Sex.’ ”

CRITIC’S CHOICE

POWERFUL AND DIRECT

There is an unrelenting darkness to “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s glimpse at the world of men who survive by manipulating other people. They’re salesmen, and there is little that is noble about them. Yet there is a human side, and it takes a stirring performance by Jack Lemmon to bring it to the forefront. Lemmon’s part is juicy, but it is Al Pacino as the top-gun salesman who brings real energy to the screen. For those who thought the film might flesh out aspects of the stage play, it does not. It is as simple and as direct--and as powerful--with no frills attached. “Glengarry Glen Ross” is screening at theaters throughout San Diego County.