Good Morning America Ratings Continue to Drop
THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Television; NBC Losing Morning Race As Ratings of 'Today' Drop
See the article in its original context from
February 26, 1990
,
Section D , Page
1Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
One axiom of morning television, where viewing habits are especially ingrained, is that ratings tend to move at a glacial pace.
After enduring a firestorm of negative publicity over the last year, NBC's ''Today'' show is defying that trend. Its ratings suddenly seem to be on the verge of a meltdown.
Since Jane Pauley left as co-host and Deborah Norville replaced her, the ''Today'' show has fallen from its position of leadership in the competition among the three network morning shows, to a distant second place, almost a full rating point behind ABC's ''Good Morning America.'' The long-stagnant ''CBS This Morning'' has also made some ratings gains at the expense of ''Today.''
More ominously, the ''Today'' show has lost 10 percent of its ratings since Jan. 26. For the week of Feb. 12-16, the most recent period reported, the ''Today'' show had a rating of 3.6. (Each rating point represents 921,000 households with televisions.) The ratings gap is the widest since ''Good Morning America'' led ''Today'' in August 1985.
At the same time, ''Good Morning America'' has increased its lead over ''Today'' among young women, the group most morning advertisers want to reach. ABC's superior audience makeup adds to a growing economic advantage over ''Today.''
For the networks, morning television is a major profit center. One network sales executive said ABC was charging almost $10,000 more for each 30-second commercial than ''Today.'' With 28 network commercials on each program, ''Good Morning America'' would be getting about $280,000 more than the ''Today'' show every day at those rates.
How did the ''Today'' decline happen? The switch from Ms. Pauley to Ms. Norville, accomplished by NBC with all the grace of a mudslide, is the easiest explanation. Though Ms. Pauley publicly described the decision to leave the program as her own, Ms. Norville has been assailed in the press as a scheming interloper who wrecked a happy television family.
NBC has vehemently protested that this characterization is unfair, but it is apparently powerless to erase perception that has been formed by a significant portion of the public.
The network is still putting the best possible face on the sliding ''Today'' ratings, arguing that every time there is a major personality change on a morning program, some viewers look elsewhere.
The ratings decline of the last month indicates that the damage to the program may be more serious and lasting, though its new executive producer, Tom Capra, said, ''I don't think we're going to go much lower.''
The last time ''Today'' lost command of first place to ''Good Morning America'' was in January 1980. It did not regain the top spot for five years.
This time around, the additional dynamic at work in weakening the ''Today'' ratings is the public reaction to the holdover host of the program, Bryant Gumbel. At least one popularity tracking poll, the ''Q-ratings'' taken by Marketing Evaluations Inc, showed an increase in negative reaction to Mr. Gumbel in its annual findings, issued last May. That was only a few months after Mr. Gumbel was encircled in his own swarm of negative publicity, stemming from the publication of an internal memo he wrote suggesting changes in the program.
Most of Mr. Gumbel's comprehensive analysis of the problems of the program was squashed by the outrage aroused by his vituperative criticism of the program's popular weather personality, Willard Scott.
A recent tracking study conducted by the CBS head of research, David Poltrack, indicated some continuing negative reaction to Mr. Gumbel.
NBC does not dispute that Mr. Gumbel continues to be damaged by the fallout over the memo. ''The publicity and the negative factors have hurt us,'' Mr. Capra said.
A year later, the network and Mr. Gumbel have had few ideas about how to re-establish his popularity. There has been little promotion by NBC and no press interviews by Mr. Gumbel. He has been gun-shy, but without a significant counterattack that might have emphasized Mr. Gumbel's strengths, the void has been filled by mostly harsh evaluations of the new NBC morning team.
Mr. Poltrack said previous personality switches in the morning shows differed because the holdover personality retained much of the core audience. NBC's problem, he said, has been that Mr. Gumbel, still facing a negative audience perception, has not helped enough in holding viewers. The result has been an unusual period of sampling, he said, in which viewers have switched back and forth between shows far more often.
With the audience so unsettled, CBS is taking the highly unusual step of making a personality change of its own. Starting today, Paula Zahn becomes a co-anchor of ''CBS This Morning,'' replacing Kathleen Sullivan. Ms. Zahn was recruited from ABC, where she had been the news anchor for ''Good Morning America.''
As Mr. Poltrack agreed, stability is a key factor in morning television. ''Good Morning America,'' the most stable program, is thriving. But CBS wanted Ms. Zahn, and it decided now might be the right time to get her on the air. In that way, the network could to try to take advantage of those viewers suddenly looking for different breakfast partners than the ones behind the NBC counter.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/26/business/the-media-business-television-nbc-losing-morning-race-as-ratings-of-today-drop.html
0 Response to "Good Morning America Ratings Continue to Drop"
Post a Comment