War news loosens its grip

Television news’ near-blanket coverage of the war in Iraq is winding down, and proof of it came swiftly Tuesday. That’s when CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC all cut away from developments in the Middle East to carry a live press conference on the possible connection of bodies that recently washed ashore to the case of missing Modesto woman Laci Peterson.

The mother-to-be’s disappearance had been a staple of cable news after she vanished in December, until war coverage pushed that story and others from the lineup. (The Peterson story also returned to the front page of Tuesday’s Times.)

The shift in cable’s attentions followed that of the prime-time network newsmagazines, which had already been moving away from war. Tonight, the return to non-war programming gets more pronounced, with Fleetwood Mac on “Dateline NBC” and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and David, Stephen and John Skakel discussing the Martha Moxley murder on CBS’ “48 Hours.”

CNN, MSNBC and Fox News declined comment on how their programming is going to change in the coming days, with some executives noting that it depends on the news. But Wolf Blitzer, who had been anchoring much of CNN’s war coverage from Kuwait, got on a plane for the U.S. Tuesday, joining the exodus of high-profile TV news correspondents from the region. ABC’s Ted Koppel returned home over the weekend, as did NBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Daryn Kagan. CBS’ Dan Rather is still in Baghdad and likely to stay there through the week. Many reporters who have been traveling with the coalition troops for the last month are also heading out.

In addition to the Peterson story, the networks have started sprinkling other news into their lineups, such as reports on American Airlines’ financial troubles. President Bush pushed along the changing news agenda Tuesday with a speech on budget issues.

And the ubiquitous news crawls, which had previously been devoted almost solely to war developments, began to include other news Tuesday. CNN’s news crawl started to include sports and entertainment headlines, for instance.

“The Iraq story is going to command the vast majority of our air time for a long time to come, but that doesn’t mean other stories shouldn’t be told,” said Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. “Laci Peterson got a lot of attention before the war, and if this is indeed a big development, it deserves a fair amount of attention. The other big story that will get more air time on CNN is the SARS virus,” he added.

Viewers also are signaling a lessening interest in the war coverage. News ratings for last week, released Tuesday, show that the audience for cable news networks continues to slowly erode as the war winds down, with Fox News best retaining audience to widen its lead over CNN.

Together, Fox, CNN and MSNBC totaled 8.5 million viewers during an average minute in prime time last week, down 12% from the previous week and slightly more than 30% since the war began. Fox averaged 4.1 million viewers, compared with 2.9 million watching CNN and 1.5 million watching MSNBC.

By contrast, the network evening newscasts showed nominal growth over the previous week, as well as the corresponding window in 2002, after a stretch in which “NBC Nightly News” had been the only one to show improvement. NBC maintained a solid competitive advantage by averaging 10.8 million viewers, compared with 9.7 million viewing “ABC World News Tonight” and 7.9 million tuning in to the “CBS Evening News.”

The next big shift for the all-news cable channels will come in prime-time programming. CNN declined to discuss the possible move of Paula Zahn, “American Morning” anchor, to the evenings as a replacement for “Connie Chung Tonight,” which was canceled during the war. Zahn has been doing double morning and evening duty for the last week.

MSNBC, meanwhile, introduced much of what will be its new evening lineup about a week into the war, shifting “Hardball With Chris Matthews” to an earlier slot and adding shows hosted by Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough. They will be joined at some point in the next couple of months by former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, whose new MSNBC show has just started development. The network declined to say when it would premiere.