Moyer, Lange Overcome TV News Slump : Ratings: Despite overall decline in November viewership, KNBC’s 11 p.m. broadcast gets 10% boost.

With the O.J. Simpson trial just a memory and the Southland basking in gorgeous weather, most local TV newscasts saw their viewership dip during the November ratings sweeps, according to data released Thursday by the A.C. Nielsen Co.

One of the few exceptions to the post-Simpson depression for local TV news was KNBC-TV Channel 4’s 11 p.m. newscast, anchored by Paul Moyer and Kelly Lange. Buoyed by parent network NBC’s front-running prime-time schedule, it jumped nearly 10% over a year ago, to about 450,000 homes a night, to retain the mantle of Southern California’s most-popular newscast.

Rival KABC-TV Channel 7 also bucked the general ratings malaise at 11 p.m., enjoying about the same increase as KNBC yet trailing by an average of 70,000 households each weeknight.

KCBS-TV Channel 2, which in the previous November had parlayed an exclusive multi-part interview with Superior Court Judge Lance Ito and the arrival of $2-million-a-year anchor Ann Martin into its first second-place finish at 11 p.m. in more than a decade, lost 20% of its late news audience and tumbled back into a distant third.

The November sweeps is one of four annual ratings periods that local stations use to set some advertising rates.

Mary Hall, director of sales research at KCBS, said that this year’s news content, despite the relentless pursuit of the Linda Sobek disappearance, was simply not as compelling as last year’s.

“That was the beginning of the O.J. Simpson frenzy, with jury selection and pretrial maneuverings, and we also had a lot of serious weather, the start of something like three months of continuous rain,” she said.

The absence of Simpson news proved most detrimental to the network-owned stations’ early-evening news blocks, where ratings declined across the board from a year ago.

KABC’s decline of about 16% at 6 p.m.--with Marc Brown having taken over as co-anchor with Laura Diaz for the departed Paul Dandrige--hurt most of all because it permitted KNBC, fronted by Jess Marlow and Wendy Tokuda, to squeak out a narrow victory at 6 for the first time in several years.

KABC managed to win the 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. news hours as usual by wide margins, while KNBC continued to dominate the early-morning news battle.

KCBS, which has been making changes in its anchor teams, was third at both 4 and 5. On the 4 p.m. newscast, Jerry Dunphy, who was lured away from KCAL-TV Channel 9 earlier this year, and Linda Alvarez, who recently replaced longtime anchor Tritia Toyota in a move that was publicly denounced by some Asian American organizations, lost audience from a year ago and attracted only 6% of the available audience.

By contrast, KABC’s 4 p.m. newscast, boosted by the strong lead-in of talk queen Oprah Winfrey, drew 17% of the audience.

Other local stations also suffered audience erosion for their newscasts last month, but the standings remained the same. KTLA-TV Channel 5 scored another victory at 10 p.m., followed by Fox-owned KTTV-TV Channel 11, KCAL-TV Channel 9 and KCOP-TV Channel 13, which saw its new anchor team of Tawny Little and Bob Jimenez grab only 3% of the viewers.

Meanwhile, Channel 5’s “KTLA Morning News” again bested all three network morning shows and KTTV’s morning program with Steve Edwards between 7 and 9 a.m., despite losing more than 25% of its audience from November, 1994.

Many of the daytime talk shows that did so well last year also stumbled this past month, while none of the new ones made any mark at all.

“The Ricki Lake Show,” for example, which was poised last season to depose “Oprah” as queen of the roost, lost nearly 30% of its audience on KCOP at 5 p.m. “Oprah” itself lost about 15% of last year’s total but still managed to outdistance all talk competitors.

KCBS’ “Carnie” was the highest-rated newcomer, but with only a meager 1.5 rating (each point represents 49,175 households). Below that were the rookie shows hosted by Danny Bonaduce, Tempestt Bledsoe, Mark Wahlberg, Gabrielle Carteris and George Hamilton/Alana Stewart.

“Carnie” even bested entrenched hosts Charles Perez, Gordon Elliot and Rolanda Watts but, in the head-to-head 2 p.m. talk battle, it finished last behind KCOP’s “Jenny Jones,” KCAL’s “Marilyn Kagen” and KNBC’s “Donahue.”

The bad news for talk is that KABC’s veteran soap “General Hospital” beat all of them at 2 p.m. by a wide margin, as did “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” at noon and 1 p.m.

In prime time, NBC, propelled by its invincible Thursday night lineup, won the November sweeps both in Los Angeles and around the country. The victory completed the network’s sweep of all four ratings periods in 1995 and was its first November victory--a critical time because it measures the strength of the lineups rolled out by all the networks in September--since 1989. ABC finished second, CBS was third and Fox was fourth, although Fox executives pointed out that the network tied for second with ABC among the hard-to-reach 18- to 34-year-old crowd.

Other ratings highlights last month included: KNBC’s “Extra” scoring higher than both “Hard Copy” and “Entertainment Tonight” on KCBS; KTTV’s syndicated reruns of “Home Improvement” doing big numbers at 7 p.m., beating everything except KABC’s “Jeopardy!”; and Channel 11’s reruns of “The Simpsons,” the only real choice for children on broadcast television at 7:30 p.m., whipping everything else in the time period, including “Seinfeld” on KTLA, KABC’s “Wheel of Fortune” and several tabloid shows. It was the market’s highest-rated program outside of prime time.