Who’s No. 1 in the 10 O’Clock News? The Picture Isn’t Clear

Just as his station’s evening newscast rolled to a win in the July ratings book last week, David Goldberg, on the job as KTLA-TV Channel 5’s news director for just one year, got the sack.

His problem--and the station’s--is not their ability to win in April, June or July. That happens regularly. The problem is that KTLA’s 10 p.m. news, which dominated the time period unchallenged for some 20 years, no longer wins when it really counts: during the three major television sweeps periods in February, May and November.

At issue, basically, is which station--Channel 5 or its arch rival, Fox-owned KTTV-TV Channel 11--can legitimately call itself No. 1 in news at 10 p.m. (Two other local news competitors in that time slot, KCAL-TV Channel 9 and KCOP-TV Channel 13, haven’t been much of a factor of late.)

During the past 10 months, KTLA and KTTV have split the weeknight news battle, although KTLA has won four of the past five months, losing only the ultra-important May book. This raises some questions: Do sweeps determine the TV news champion, just as the World Series determines baseball’s annual king? Or are the sweeps, because of the stunts and hype that accompany them, misrepresentations of just which newscast Los Angeles-area viewers prefer?

“Our goal is to win all the time,” said Jose Rios, news director at Channel 11, the champion at 10 p.m. in sweeps for the past year. But given a choice between winning all the other nine months or capturing just the sweeps, Rios said he’d take the sweeps, which are used for bragging rights and, even more important, to determine most advertising rates.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the emphasis on sweeps rankles Hal Fishman, KTLA’s enduring anchor, who as the undisputed 10 p.m. news champion for decades has built a career as one of the most successful news personalities in the history of local television. The sweeps, in a sense, are rigged against KTLA, he said, because that’s when the Fox prime-time lineup--crammed during those months with much ballyhooed special events and episodes of the network’s hit shows like “Melrose Place”--soars.

“In our business, sweeps have traditionally been the guide for who is No. 1,” Fishman said. “But that is a bit anachronistic to me because it’s like giving a horse steroids and saying, ‘This is how it runs naturally all the time.’ ”

Statistics do validate Fishman’s point. During the sweeps, when Fox prime time is in high gear, Channel 11 often enjoys double or triple the number of viewers leading into the news than KTLA, which now carries the growing but still fledgling WB network several nights a week. In addition, the Fox supremacy in prime time enables KTTV to promote that night’s newscast to many more viewers.

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Even so, KTTV’s news rating drops off noticeably from its lead-in while KTLA’s sometimes jumps up. The knowledge that viewers deliberately change the channel each night to watch his newscast, Fishman said, has softened the pain of losing after so many years on top. “That’s very rare and very rewarding,” Fishman said.

But KTTV’s Rios dismisses Fishman’s remarks as sour grapes rationalization. He said that KTLA’s ratings superiority during June and July are hardly worth the trumpeting done by the station.

“To me, it’s like comparing the regular football season and the preseason,” Rios said. “And they are arguing that everyone should count preseason games and not the regular season, when we do very well.

“I can understand them wanting to spin stuff, but I think they also need to give us credit. We’ve grown as a news operation, and our ratings continue to grow. We put on a credible newscast with good anchors and reporters. I’m not sure why they are so unwilling to acknowledge us.”

Rios said that in the demographic ratings--the numbers that advertisers prize most--his newscast, anchored by John Beard and Christine Devine, has been “shellacking [KTLA] pretty good.”

In May, for example, KTTV was first in all three major demographic groups--adults 18 to 34, 18 to 49 and 25 to 54--with a huge lead among women especially. Most of the advertising buys in this market are made on the basis of such demographics, Rios said.

By comparison, KTLA’s newscast attracts many more older viewers who are less appealing to advertisers, although the newscast still is profitable for the station.

Rios also stated that KTTV has won dozens of journalism awards over the past several years, including a couple of Emmys for best newscast, while KTLA during that same time period has earned no such distinctions.

Fishman said it is not that he does not respect KTTV’s newscast--at least as much as he has seen of it since he’s on the air at the same time the rival station’s program airs. What intrigues him, he said, is that--given the strength of Fox’s lead-in, Channel 11’s news program doesn’t do even better.

“When they do win, they only win by a fraction of a [ratings] point,” Fishman said. “If I had an 11.5 lead in, and then ended up with a 4.3 for my newscast like they had one night last week, I would be very disappointed. With their lead-in, they should be doing much better.”

His emphasis on Channel 5’s lead-in disadvantage seems to suggest a no-win situation for any news director. On the one hand, Goldberg was fired was because his programming changes didn’t result in victories during sweeps. And yet Goldberg as news director could do nothing about the station’s disadvantage when it came to the lead-in.

Fishman admitted to philosophical differences with Goldberg, who attempted to include longer, more in-depth stories as well as quirkier, lighter features such as where to buy the best chocolate in Los Angeles.

“It is not surprising to me that he is out,” Fishman said. “He was brought in after May of 1996 when for the first time in something like 200 months we lost. And he made these changes--longer pieces, exploring stories from all different angles--while I feel that people want the full meal at 10 p.m.: stories that cover everything from local news, national news, international, outer space, weather and sports--and then they go to bed.”

He insisted there was “nothing I wanted more than for [Goldberg] to succeed.” “But we continued to lose the sweeps, and it was clear that his changes did not work in Los Angeles.”

Fishman, who recently renewed his lucrative contract through September 2000, said he didn’t think that management turnover and turmoil at KTLA would hinder the station’s effort to regain the news lead.

For now, Steve Inouye, director of administration and development, and news operations manager Fernando Lopez will oversee the news department until a replacement for Goldberg is found. Also, Terry Anzur, a former anchor at KCBS-TV Channel 2, will join KTLA next month as co-anchor; Fishman has been flying solo since Marta Waller was removed from the broadcast last October. (She subsequently filed a lawsuit alleging age and gender discrimination.)

Another seemingly perilous spot on KTLA’s current news operation is its morning news program with Carlos Amezcua and Barbara Beck. Once the ratings champ in L.A., the show has slumped a bit in the past year, falling behind at least one of the network morning shows from New York and allowing Channel 11’s rival program featuring Steve Edwards--once barely a speck on the ratings radar--to creep within striking distance of Channel 5 in that time period.

Fishman said KTLA’s problem is not internal or really even with his three news competitors at 10 p.m., Channel 9 and Channel 13, in addition to Channel 11. The real contest, Fishman insisted--although no one within KTLA’s news department can do anything about it--is with the Fox network itself. As WB programming carried on KTLA becomes more competitive in prime time, he said, KTLA’s news will inevitably rise again.

“I’m a realist, and it will take us a while to build up a network so that we are back to a level playing field,” Fishman said. “That may be one year or two years away, I don’t know. But WB is adding another night of programming this coming season, and that will help.

“But we are playing catch-up with the Fox network, and we have a very late start.”