- Cover of Jay Leno
Some random thought about the news ratings for the November sweeps:
* The owner of Channel 4, LIN Broadcasting, didn’t get much reason to hurry to fill positions in sports or in news after winning every news time period except 6 a.m.
After all, its ratings improved from a year ago in every time period except 11 p.m. despite having only two on-air sports staffers and filling Lisa Flynn’s 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. anchor slots with main anchors Don Postles and Jacquie Walker.
In these tough economic days, companies aren’t about to hire people when they can overwork the staffers they’ve got without any audience drop-off.
It is noticeable that Western New York viewers don’t appear to notice or care about the relative inexperience of the new local TV reporters who have been hired right out of college.
At least the ratings don’t reflect any audience dissatisfaction.
* Having said that, Channel 2’s larger news staff could be partly responsible for its success in narrowing the ratings gap between it and Channel 4.
The triumph of “Daybreak” at 6 a.m. over Channel 4’s “Wake Up” is one example. “Daybreak” has a larger staff and also a more lively presentation.
Channel 2 also has the largest sports staff in town, which can’t hurt in the fall when the Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bills are playing.
* Channel 7’s morning change to Patrick Taney and Ginger Geoffery didn’t bring much initial boost to the station’s ratings. They were as flat as the show’s content is most mornings. But it takes a few ratings books to assess the impact of anchor changes.
And flat is good at Channel 7 these days. The ratings for Eyewitness News dropped 26 percent at 5 p.m., 21 percent at 6 p.m. and 21 percent at 11 p.m. from the low third place numbers it had a year ago.
At 11 p.m., Channel 7 isn’t helped by the poor lead-ins from ABC’s 10 p.m. prime time shows, including “Detroit 1-8-7,” “Private Practice” and “The Whole Truth” (which has been canceled).
Channel 2 isn’t getting much help from NBC’s 10 p.m. shows, either. They aren’t getting ratings much better than the Jay Leno (see above) disaster a year ago. But the prime time dramas seem to appeal more to news viewers than Leno so Channel 2 ratings at 11 p.m. have gone up 22 percent from a year ago.
* Finally, November 2011 should be most interesting. That’s when Channel 4’s early news will lose the lead-in from “Oprah,” which is ending its run in May. Without Winfrey, Channel 4 could have trouble staying No.1 in the 5 p.m. to 6:30 news p.m. block.
Alan Pergament was the television critic for The Buffalo News for 28 years. He currently is an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and Medaille College, teaching courses in communications. He also writes a monthly column on the media for Buffalo Spree magazine.
Do you have something aginst Channel 7? All your rants about them are negative. Just look at your ratings post. “Channel 4 and 2 improve….and oh channel 7 is last”.
It seems so to me too.
“It is noticeable that Western New York viewers don’t appear to notice or care about the relative inexperience of the new local TV reporters who have been hired right out of college.
At least the ratings don’t reflect any audience dissatisfaction.”
TV is still the easiest and most immediate view of local news.
It sucks, but where else do we go? If people did in fact find a way to tune out hte owners would fund evenless and the casts would grow poorer.
Then again in a market where the news leader looks like something produced by the PR Dept. maybe people gave up long ago.