Historic Political Events Heat Up Sunday News Show Ratings

It’s the first Friday afternoon of the impeachment trial in the Senate and Cokie Roberts, cell phone in hand, momentarily stops in the Capitol corridors to place a call to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). For nearly three months, most Democrats, and the entire Clinton administration, have been impossible to book on her Sunday morning news show, “This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts,” due to a contract dispute that resulted in a network lockout of the technical unions.

But Roberts had just gotten word the dispute had been settled, reopening the door for Democrats who had stayed away in deference to the unions. “We’ve been lucky because it’s been a Republican story so far,” said Roberts. “And we have more commentators than the other shows . . . but guests do matter. Don’t believe for a second that they don’t.”

That is why, in the midst of the impeachment tumult and her live reports on the afternoon network coverage, she was doing a full-court press to improve the guest lineup for Sunday’s show.

For the Washington Sunday talk circuit, the ABC lockout notwithstanding, these have been flush times for both reporters and the reported-on. Collectively, the Sunday political chat shows on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox are up 15% in ratings from January 1998, and that was in the midst of the original Lewinsky-affair revelations. For the time being, it’s all impeachment, all the time. And for Washington insiders, there’s nothing like it.

“This story and the Sunday morning shows have found themselves,” said Dorrance Smith, executive producer of “This Week.” “There will be a day, maybe in April, when the trial has been over for a time, when we will just have a show about, say, Social Security. But certainly not now.”

In a sense, the actual ratings of the Sunday shows are only a shadow of their influence.

“These shows are the place where the politicians and policy-makers trade ideas and send messages to each other,” said Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “On this story, the people who want to be heard come on these shows. They may not have the ratings of the nightly newscasts or magazines, but it is the place that opinion-makers watch, and that is whom the politicians want to appeal to.”

“What the politicians say here is repeated in sound bites all day Sunday on radio and Sunday night on the local and national newscasts,” said Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the most highly rated of the Sunday shows, with 4.9 million viewers (“This Week” averages 3.9 million; “Face the Nation,” 2.4 million; Fox’s “News Sunday,” 1.4 million). “Then their quotes are in the Monday newspapers and are answered by Joe Lockhart at the White House press briefings,” he said.

Increasingly, though, the Clinton administration and the congressional leadership have been trying to control how many times someone goes on a Sunday morning show, and, in some cases, which ones they go on.

“In my old job, you would start planning on Thursday and Friday to see what you would say on Sunday shows,” said former Clinton aide George Stephanopolous, who is now a political commentator for ABC. “You would generally want to roll a story out, something that you would open out further the next week. Unfortunately,” he went on with a pained grin, “a lot of times we were usually closing stories down.”

“In the old days, which I guess is the 1980s, you had a good guest on Sunday and it changed the whole dynamic of the news cycle,” said Roberts. “But then the administration set up this rotation. It drives me nuts. In this particular impeachment season, this is insane. But it makes their lives simpler.”

During recent weeks, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) also has parceled Republican senators out to the various shows. Donaldson laments that that means you may get, say, Lott next week, but then be out of the rotation, and out of luck, if you want him a couple of weeks hence when a vote on conviction might take place.

The three main network Sunday morning news shows take slightly different tacks. “Meet the Press” relies on Russert’s insider one-on-one interviewing style. Schieffer, on “Face the Nation,” is much more subdued, and he has only a half-hour, compared to the other two shows’ hourlong broadcasts.

“This Week” has Roberts and Donaldson joined by conservative columnist George Will grilling subjects, then moves to a round-table discussion with those three and conservative writer William Kristol and Stephanopolous.

“I’m sure that some people have their favorite shows to go on. Some like ‘Meet the Press’ and ‘Face the Nation,’ where you have one person interviewing you and you can prepare just for them,” said Donaldson. “Ours, you have at least three people with different styles. You are going to have to field questions that you might feel are off the wall.

“We had senators on one week who were talking about censure instead of impeachment. George Will said, ‘OK, then write me an impeachment resolution.’ They were all stumped, which proved they hadn’t thought the position through. Some people like that, and we like it when they do.”

Former Secretary of State James Baker often chose “This Week” to announce big news, according to Donaldson, but Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has not appeared on the show since 1982, despite a cordial working relationship with Donaldson and Roberts, because he felt he was treated unfairly on a show back then.

Still, for many top politicians who want to pick their spots, the Sunday shows usually are one stop they are inclined to make. Besides, despite the proliferation of network news and magazine shows, the impeachment coverage there has been limited.

“If you would have told me even 10 months ago that we would have an impeachment trial and the networks would drop out of coverage, well, I can’t even tell you what I would think,” Donaldson said.

But those who run the Sunday shows expect the impeachment trial--for as long as it lasts--will dominate the content of their programming. As CBS’ Schieffer puts it: “I know in some cases, even the media are tired of this story, just ready for the vote. But it has been incredibly competitive for us on the Sunday shows.”

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“Meet the Press” airs at 7 a.m. on KNBC; “Face the Nation” at 8:30 a.m. on KCBS; and “This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts” at 10 a.m. on KABC.