Birmingham Post-Herald from Birmingham, Alabama • 42

Pag 6-Birmingham Poct-Hwald Kudzu Friday April 3 1911 Hhilll lt jit Hf I WVTM takeslate lead but WBRC early king e' Wi h'cj i 49 By THOMAS HARGROVE Pyifyy RcpOflir 33 PUT in 27 rf: 18 iff: 111: iW- "Anytime there is a change In the market people are going to look and see: We have new people and they are going to want to look at them It is going to taka some time for them to become as familiar as our old people" Hayes said he hopes that Scott Richards WBRCs replacement anchorman will develop the kind of popularity Langston had "Scott Richards knows what he is talking about He writes part of the show He is not just a reader more than Just a so-called pretty face He is a working newsman" Hayes admits it win take time for the new faces He isn't promising that WBRCs May Arbitral will show remarkable improvement "And I would anticipate that you will be seeing a lot more promotions" Meanwhile WBRC can take some solace from the fact that it still has a strong program at 5:30 pm The Arbitral February ratings indicated that of all of the households with-TV sets in Birmingham 27 percent had those sets switched on to the channel early-evening news That means that among pro-pie who were actually watching TV at 5:30 pm about 49 percent were watching The late ratings 40 17 THE LEAD fer popularity of 10 news shows has changed hands in a fierce fight between the television towers on Red Mountain For the first time since WVTM (channel 13) began direct competition for late news with WBRC (channel 6) a few years ago its news program got higher popularity marks by the Arbitral ratings service think it is a very volatile situation now" said Hoyle Broome general manager of WBMG-TV Since his channel 42 news program airs at 6 pm Broome's station is not involved directly in the late night battle Yet his ability to be objective about the 10 pm slot fight has not made it easy to predict who will be the eventual winner in the news ratings game wouldn't hazard a guess There are a lot of changes now We don't have a stable situation in which to make a long-range prediction" Channel 13 has fought for improved ratings with a steady stream of daytime and prime time news promotions construction of a 31 million antennae to extend the broadcast range and acquisition of WBRC veteran newsmen Joe Langston and sportscaster Herb Winches Recently released Arbitral figures show that among households that were watching television at 10 pm in February 40 percent were watching WVTM while 32 percent picked WBRC peat deal more has been put into our news in the last few months" said Everett Holle WVTM program director you can add to that the impact of the leading news personalities of Joe and Herb and the tremendous additional coverage that the tower gives us and the various promotional The shift in popularity was sudden for WVTM In the November ratings three months earlier it lagged about 11 percentage points behind WBRC for the 13 pm slot the only time in the day when the two stations are in direct competition for news show ratings On another part of Red Mountain channel 6 news director John Hayes summed up what happened "It doesn't surprise me that we slipped I would expect that there would be a lot of viewer sampling We lost both of our mainline anchors But it's no big deal 14 WVTMs 5 o'clock news gathered a market share of about 18 percent of an of all peopte'wtoirare watching Tatthe time Those lower ratings led the station to move its local report back to I pm in hopes of finding more people at home Channel 42's "Six Report" only pulled in about percent of the viewers at that time But Broome says he has no intention of eliminating the show "We have attempted to bring on a news show without a lot of fanfare and hype We give news as news We tend to be more straight facts rather than going after the show Mi kind of audience" Arbitral is a New York based ratings service which first began monitoring TV programming popularity in the Washington DC market in 1949 The following year it expanded its operations to New York Chica go and Cleveland Today Arbitral conducts ratings surveys in 215 television markets and 241 radio markets The black bars above refer to the percentage of all television sets in the Birmingham area which were turned to a specific show The gray bars refer only to the proportion of sets that were turned on and tuned to a certain snow Tho percentages do not reflect the people who chose not to watch Channel 13 has since moved its news to 6 pm last year The most popular continuous series were: "Dallas" "60 Minutes" "The Dukes of CBS pro- Kama and NBCs "Little House on the airier and ABCs "The Love Boat" The ratings are the result of a survey in which TV viewers are asked to keep a Sot what they watch each day for a The Birmingham data is based upoo 551 households which took part in the survey from Feb 4 to March 3 During the latest survey period which are often called the "February the CBS television network led the pack as having the most popular assortment of programming followed by ABC and NBC which was also In last place Believe it or not there are television people who skip the ratings THE ARBITRON ratings don't cause the sweat to trickle for a few local station programmers "At some point you stop worrying about the ratings or even watching said Don Roberts promotions manager for WBIQ the PBS affiliate on channel 10 Public television which is supported by government and private grants and subscription cable television are not dependant upon high survey scores lor revenues "We don't think about the ratings too said Roberts "It is sort of a public broadcasting state of mind we are an alternative network We aren't competing with commercial television" And a good thing toa Although Roberts said public television appeals to a very least One of the most popular shows for the network was Cart Sagan'S series which tallied a 4 percent market share in some spots of Alabama And if all else fails there's always "Sesame which has drawn a 5 percent audience is the Birmingham area Birmingham Cable Communications runs the John Davidson show a musical variety program similar to the Mike Doug-las show at 5 pm but company spokesman Andre Taylor said there is no survey data to show its popularity against commercial news shows The cable does carry the ABC Nightline network news at 10:30 pm after the local news shows sign off Both programs are run on the cable company's local access channel involved audience whom "we hear a great deal the ratings indicate that WBIQ's market share is infinitesimal Although WBIQ does not subscribe to Arbitral or the Nielson rating services the Public Broadcasting Service is sometimes able to get survey data for some of its affiliates "We would have great ratings if we had ratings of say 5 percent But we know that from what ratings PBS has gotten from the Neilson that they (ratings) can't even measure the audience that we The Alabama Educational Television Network programs a news-type show called "For The which airs at 6:30 pm from Montgomery "It covers state news from around the capital and the Legislature And I don't believe that anyone in the state covers the Legislature better" Yet very few people are watching the low-key news show According to a November Neilson ratings less than 1 percent ot the survey audience tuned in The in Montgomery and Birmingham For a few days each week the show's audience in Huntsville mustered only a 2 percent of the total market last November PBS considers itself lucky if a viewer chooses to watch any of public television's fare And by that definition people who watch public television at least once in a given week PBS is becoming more popular "We know that in November that the figure went over the 50 percent mark for the first time that means that at least half of the people tuned in public television at.