24/51 Fights for Seinfeld 9

After investing more than $5 million to resurrect a local news operation in the summer of 2000, the November Nielsen ratings indicate NBC 24/51’s 10 p.m. newscast had a smaller percentage of viewers than the station had when it aired reruns of “Seinfeld” in that time slot.

But that’s not a big surprise, said David Needham, vice president and general manager of the television station based in Fayetteville and Fort Smith. Needham said it will take at least two years to be able to judge how well the news venture is doing anyway, and he’s happy at this point to be close to the 9 percent of viewers Seinfeld had.

“We knew going in that it would take at least two years to make a difference,” he said. “I’m holding the numbers. That’s fine, but my job is to grow the numbers.”

Needham is quick to note that NBC 24/51, KPOM/KFAA, was the only local television news station to have a rating* increase for the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts from November 2000 to last November. And the station’s rating for the 5 p.m. newscast jumped by a whopping 63 percent during the same year.

Click here to see the latest ratings from Nielsen.

Needham said five years would be an even better indicator of the success of the news operation. Right now, it’s just too early to tell, he said.

The 10 p.m. news slot generally is considered the best barometer of the health of a local news operation. NBC just happened to be airing reruns of one of the most popular situation comedy shows in history in that time slot before resuming its 10 p.m. newscast.

And viewers are set in their ways. If they’ve been watching one newscast, they’ve probably grown comfortable with it, and it’s difficult to get them to change the channel.

“The lifeline of any major television station is based on that book,” Needham said of the quarterly ratings from Nielsen Media Research. “Your revenue is based on that book. National and regional advertisers buy based on that book … We’re asking people to change their habits. What I tell everybody here is every book is a positive, because every book tells a story.”

Needham said the Nielsen ratings let him know how viewers respond to changes made at the station.

“We’ve been trying to grow a baby, and it hasn’t been easy,” he said. “We’ll tweak it every day and every week, and that’s a constant in this business.”

Insignificant Shrinkage

Seinfeld had a 9 share in May 2000 before it was bumped to 11:36 p.m. weekdays to make room for the 10 p.m. newscast on NBC 24/51. That means an estimated 9 percent of the area households with television stations on at that time were watching Seinfeld on NBC.

In the November ratings period, the newscast received an 8 share, according to Nielsen. The ratings are for the 10-county dominant market area, which includes Fort Smith and two counties in Oklahoma. The three local television stations try to cover what is considered a “hyphenated market” including Fort Smith to the south and the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro area to the north.

Needham said NBC 24/51 has shown more substantial growth over the past year in the other three news time slots (early morning, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.), but it’s hard to compete with the Seinfeld show because it has an almost cult following.

NBC 24/51 has received an 8 share in the 10 p.m. time slot for all five Nielsen ratings periods since resuming the newscast except for one. In May 2001, the newscast’s share slipped to 6 but is now back up to 8.

From November 2000 to last November, however, NBC 24/51’s ranking improved by 63 percent during the 5 p.m. newscast, 8 percent at 6 p.m. and 3 percent at 10 p.m. when household “rating” is considered.

Seinfeld netted a staggering 16 percent of the viewers (“share”) in the 25-54 age bracket in the 10-county area before being relegated to the late-night time slot. In November, the 10 p.m. news on NBC 24/51 kept only 5 percent of the viewers in that age bracket.

NBC 24/51 is the only locally owned network television station in the market. It’s owned by Griffin Holdings Inc. of Muskogee, Okla. In addition to owning television stations in Oklahoma, the Griffin family also owns Griffin Food Co., which makes jams and jellies.

The other two stations in the market are owned by large national media conglomerates. KFSM, Channel 5 (a CBS affiliate), is owned by The New York Times Co., and KHBS/KHOG, Channels 40/29 (the ABC affiliate), is owned by Hearst Argyle.

John Watson Griffin of Griffin Holdings said the investment included about 50 employees and 8,700 SF of renovated space in the guts of the century-old Campbell Bell building on the downtown Fayetteville square. The station has a second office in Fort Smith with about 40 employees.

In 1992, KPOM/KFAA, Channels 24/51, canceled its local newscasts. At that time, the television news advertising market in Northwest Arkansas was about $16 million, Griffin said. Now, it’s about twice that.

The Leaders

KFSM and KHBS/KHOG have been fighting it out for the lead for decades.

KFSM has been the traditional leader in households ratings. KFSM benefits from the 10-county market area because more viewers in the Fort Smith area prefer that station.

KHOG does better with viewers in Benton and Washington counties. So KHOG usually wins in Northwest Arkansas when those counties are broken out of the pack by Nielsen a few weeks after the initial reports come out.

The demographics also indicate that KFSM does better with older viewers, and that means better overall, Needham said, because older viewers are more likely to return the Nielsen diaries.

KFSM also reaches more viewers because it has a VHF signal rather than UHF, which is what the other two stations have. Needham tried to simplify it for us by saying VHF bounces over the mountains where UHF has to go around them.

In the November ratings period, KFSM had 31 percent of the viewers over the age of 55, compared to 22 percent for KHBS/KHOG and 11 percent for NBC 24/51.

During the 10 p.m. newscast, KFSM received a 23 share, but KHOG was close behind with a 22.

In November 2000, KFSM earned a 29 share at 10 p.m. and KHBS/KHOG got 26, so they’ve both slipped a little since that ratings period. But that may be due to fewer people returning viewer “diaries” to Nielsen.

KFSM also led the over-55 age bracket, but KHBS/KHOG had the edge in the other two demographic categories: adults 18-49 and 25-54.

The executives at KHBS/KHOG tout the adults 18-49 and 25-54 categories instead of the household numbers because the station leads the market in those categories.

Ken Bauder, who took over last April as president and general manager of KHBS/KHOG, said most of his advertisers are trying to reach viewers in the younger age brackets.

How Accurate?

The Nielsen ratings are all area advertisers have to go by, but Needham said, the ratings can vary considerably depending on how many people return diaries to Nielsen.

In the November ratings, Nielsen didn’t meet its goal of receiving 440 diaries back from viewers. Instead, the television ratings company received only 421 diaries. And that number of viewers is supposed to represent almost 500,000 people who live in the 10-county area.

“They said it all had to do with Sept. 11,” Needham said. “People were afraid to open their mail and that sort of thing.”

But Needham said he figured more people would have been watching the news in the wake of Sept. 11, although they may have switched to cable news channels instead of local news. n

*”Rating” is percentage of all residents in the area. “Share” is percentage of all area television sets that are on at a given time of day. Unless otherwise noted, the numbers we use in this article refer to share of “households” because that seems to be the easiest way to make sense of the stats.

(Click here to see a minute-by-minute breakdown of each stations’ 10 p.m. newscast.)