TV news is strong

It is, of course, the right of all columnists to express any opinion, no matter how half-baked. But when serious misrepresentations creep into their work, it’s important that the record be set straight for readers.

Which brings us to Tim Rutten’s Dec. 4 column, “Anchor Shakeup Is Cause and Effect,” in which assertions are made about the nature of the news viewing audience on election night and overall. In the course of erecting a dramatic story, Rutten trips over a few realities.

On the way, he certainly did put forward a damning view of our medium. The problem is, his information about how many people are watching network news and which networks were being watched on election night was not only unsourced but was in direct contradiction to the actual Nielsen Media Research data for viewership. Nielsen is universally accepted as the official measurement of the TV viewing of the American public, except, apparently, by Rutten.

Contrary to his assertion that cable beat broadcast on that night, Nielsen tells us that CBS -- which ranked third of the six networks carrying election night coverage -- was ahead of, not behind, all three cable networks, with about 9.5 million viewers. That placed CBS News’ coverage 1.4 million viewers ahead of Fox News Channel, more than 3 million viewers ahead of CNN and 6.7 million more than MSNBC, with whom Rutten bizarrely grouped us.

It may also be worthwhile to note that for the last full, “normal” week of available Nielsen data at this writing -- not counting the subsequent, somewhat atypical week of Thanksgiving and last week, in which Tom Brokaw retired -- the most-watched edition of the “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather” attracted 8.4 million viewers, while the most-watched cable news program of the week -- Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor” of Nov. 15 -- had 3.5 million.

True, there has never been more competition for the attention of the public. This may be why newspaper readership is in such serious decline these days and its commentators so eager to place a wreath on what remains one of the nation’s most popular and essential sources of news.

Gil Schwartz

New York

The writer is executive vice president of the CBS Communications Group.