NBC Gives Dominant ABC the Evening News Challenge

After eight years of dominance by “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings,” “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” is challenging the ABC newscast for first place in the evening-news ratings.

“NBC Nightly News” drew more viewers than ABC for six straight weeks, from Dec. 23 through Jan. 20--its best winning streak since 1987. Following a tie the week of Jan. 20, NBC won again last week, according to figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research, and now is nearly tied for first place with “World News Tonight” for the season that began last fall.

“World News Tonight” has been reaching an average of 8.7 million homes a night for the season, compared to 8.6 million for “Nightly News” and about 7.5 million for the “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather.”

The challenge to ABC’s longtime leadership comes at a time when “NBC Nightly News” has been making significant changes in both its look and content. With anchor Brokaw standing in front of a “video wall,” the newscast has cut back on foreign news and Washington-based stories in favor of longer features such as “In Their Own Words,” the unfiltered words of someone in the news, and “In Depth,” which covers a single topic such as New York City’s recent experiment with ending sales tax.

NBC News executives attribute their improved standing to the changes in the newscast. “I think we’re doing a better broadcast than before, and viewers like the new features,” said “Nightly News” executive producer David Doss, a former “Dateline NBC” and “Nightly News” producer who has been producing the NBC newscast since last February.

But ABC executives say the ratings changes are largely due to NBC’s powerhouse ratings for its prime-time lineup, at a time when ABC is declining in prime time.

“They’ve benefited from NBC’s prime-time ratings and strong local ‘lead-in’ programming,” said Paul Friedman, ABC News executive vice president. “We’re always concerned when there’s a change in ratings, but the best thing we can do about it is to keep doing the best broadcast that we know how to do.”

Doss said that NBC began making changes in its newscast a year ago. “We looked at the program in the context of all the news that’s available to people on local news and cable news,” he said. “We cover the main news of the day at the beginning of the broadcast. But we’re trying to focus on news that is vital to people’s lives, and information that isn’t redundant to what people have already heard earlier in the day.”

One analyst who studies the content of the network newscasts says NBC is moving away from the traditional turf of the evening news programs.

“They have far less foreign coverage than ABC and CBS, and they had the least amount of coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign among CBS, ABC and NBC,” said Andrew Tyndall, who publishes a newsletter, the Tyndall Report, that keeps track of network news coverage. “And, while they’re de-emphasizing these stories, they’re giving more attention to high-profile crimes. They’ve had the heaviest coverage of the O.J. Simpson case since it began, and they’ve had more coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey and Ennis Cosby murders than ABC and CBS.”

According to Tyndall’s count, ABC devoted 631 minutes in 1996 to the presidential election campaign, compared to 679 on CBS and 577 on NBC. In terms of stories filed from overseas bureaus, NBC had 327 minutes in 1996, with ABC logging 577 and CBS 592.

To date, NBC has devoted 1,020 minutes to the O.J. Simpson story, versus 693 on ABC and 967 on CBS.

The day after Cosby’s slaying, “NBC Nightly News” led with the story and followed with an “In Depth” segment on another family whose daughter had been killed. NBC also recently devoted several minutes to an “American Dream” segment on Debbie Reynolds’ comeback.

But NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley says that such examples are not representative of all of the features on the program. “We do fewer ‘in-process’ stories out of Washington, but we’ve done important series [on policy] such as a series on HMOs,” Wheatley said. “There have been a number of high-profile crime stories in the news recently, but I don’t think we’re being ‘tabloid’ in our treatment of them.”

Part of the story of the nightly newscasts is that, while they continue as profitable flagships for their networks, all three “dinner-hour” programs face declining viewership in the face of changed lifestyle habits and a proliferation of alternative news choices. From a heavy viewing year in 1995-96 (including the Simpson case, the presidential campaign and blizzards in the East that kept people home), the season ratings for “Nightly News” are off 1% from the same time last year, “World New Tonight” is down 9% and CBS by 5%.

CBS has been hurt by the network’s weak local station lineup. But some at ABC News believe that “World News Tonight” is losing viewers because it replaced its award-winning “American Agenda” segment with the smaller-focus “Solutions” series.

“Solutions,” which began last fall, has focused on topics such as programs designed to increase teenage fathers’ participation in their children’s lives. But after “Solutions” focused on house rebuilding and snoring recently, the TV critic for the Wall Street Journal wrote that ABC was imitating NBC’s “soft-core” tendencies.

Kathryn Christensen, executive producer of “World News Tonight,” disagreed with such criticisms, saying, “We’re news, first and foremost. ‘Solutions’ is an important segment, but it’s one among many.”

ABC recently changed the graphics on “World News Tonight.” But apart from making “Solutions” “stronger,” Friedman and Christensen said ABC plans no new features or other major changes in the newscast.

While ABC and NBC duke it out for first place, third-place CBS is trying to make its mark by breaking news and doing investigative pieces. Jeffrey Fager, a former “60 Minutes” producer who began producing “Evening News” last January, cites stories on the Unabomber suspect and the abortion-clinic bombing in Atlanta as examples of where CBS has broken news. Last week the newscast featured an investigative series on a plant containing toxic nerve gas and a report on young street criminals in Peru. “We think it’s important to cover the hard news,” Fager said.

“In many ways, CBS has become the most traditional newscast among the three,” Tyndall said. “How that will translate into ratings, of course, remains to be seen.”