A year ago, WOWT (Cox Channel 8) lost veteran anchor Pat Persaud to retirement, yet its weekday evening newscast ratings remain virtually as strong today with Tracy Madden joining the team of co-anchor John Knicely, chief meteorologist Jim Flowers and sports director Dave Webber.
According to the May 2006 ratings issued by Nielsen Media Research, WOWT continues to attract the most viewers in newscasts at 6 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays.
Nielsen ratings are the single most important element in determining advertising rates. WOWT's lead over KETV (Cox Channel 9) is most decisive at 10 p.m., when advertising rates are the highest. WOWT garnered a 17 rating and 33 share for its 10 p.m. newscast (approximately 53,500 viewers) while KETV had a 14/27 (44,000 viewers). Late-evening news on KMTV scored a 7/13 (22,000 viewers).
The numbers reflect the viewing habits of the 314,610 TV households in the Omaha metropolitan area, which includes Douglas, Washington, Cass and Sarpy Counties in Nebraska and Pottawattamie County in Iowa. A single ratings point represents one percent of the households while share is the percentage of television sets in use tuned to a specific program. Nielsen surveyed viewers between April 27 and May 24 by asking them to write down the station they watched for news in a diary.
Local news viewership is strongest on Sunday nights. Buoyed by healthy lead-ins from network prime-time programming ("Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy"), KETV dominates with 66,000 viewers (and a whopping 39 percent share) to WOWT's 50,300. On Saturday nights at 10, WOWT pulls in 40,900 viewers to KETV's 25,200.
In the weekday morning newscast ratings, KETV had a better rating than WOWT from 5-6 a.m., but WOWT enjoyed a two ratings point lead from 6-7 a.m. At 11:30 a.m., WOWT also enjoys a two-point lead over KETV. KMTV, which airs its midday news at noon, has the most viewers of all three.
KMTV Still Distant Third
KMTV's new "Action News" format, which launched in February, has been slow to catch on with morning and evening viewers. KMTV is a distant third place at 10 o'clock and its 5 p.m ratings have sagged considerably (9,400 viewers, compared to WOWT's 31,400 and 22,000 for KETV). Weekday morning ratings for the station held steady, but remain considerably behind WOWT and KETV.
KMTV will also have the challenge of regaining an audience at 6 p.m. when it relaunches news for the first time in three years in that time slot. Having new CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric as a lead-in will certainly help, though there is a lot of ground to make up. WOWT attracts 31,500 viewers for its six o'clock news, KETV gets 28,300 and KMTV draws 6,300 with the syndicated program, "Insider."
Ratings for KPTM (Cox Channel 10) and its one-hour newscast at 9 p.m. remained steady with 15,700 viewers.
New Newscasts Struggling
KXVO's bold move to launch a 10 p.m. newscast late last year has yet to register a single rating point while KETV has had a little better success with its weekend morning newscast. Airing from 7-8:30 a.m. with anchors Brandi Peterson and Todd Andrews, it attracted 6,300 viewers while WOWT's more established weekend morning newscast (with new anchors Rachel Pierce and Mike Cronemeyer) airs from 8-9 a.m. and averages roughly four times that amount (25,200).
KETV's new 11 a.m. weekend newscast garners only 3,200 viewers in a time slot that has traditionally not included news.
2 comments:
Thanks for the update Sean. The numbers must be a tough pill for Ted Brockman and his band of toadies to swallow. Im sure their explanation is that all Omahans are stupid and unsophisticated except him. Ted lives in a world of fantasy and misinformation when it comes to analyzing local news. Reality is that until KMTV makes massive personnel changes, it is a two team ratings race.
I agree with you Media Man, tough one for Ted to deal with. His blog gets lamer and more juvenile all the time.
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