Sweeping the Ratings

There’s a dustup going on in every TV market in the country this time of year.
The ratings are back, and everyone is trying to figure out some way of promoting the fact that “we’re #1”.

It’s important to be #1. It allows the #1 station to set the bar for advertising rates. And advertising brings in the bucks. If #1 charges $1,000 a spot, then #2 has to charge less…etc.

You might have noticed during November there were a lot of shows with guest stars and news programs uncovered all kinds of issues that were promotable. The stations and networks tried to get people to watch. Lots of people watching meant a win in the ratings, which translated to cash in the pocketbooks.
A bit of ratings history –

In the mid-1960’s, the Albuquerque TV news market was dominated by KOB-TV-4. Tom Doyle (That’s it, that’s The News in Sight, thank you for tuning in and (wink) good night!) At KOAT-TV-7, we tried like hell to win with The Big Seven News – our hopes rested with anchorman George Morrison and soon to be anchor Dick Knipfing. KGGM-TV-13 lagged behind with Clyde Jay and numerous other anchors including Linda Thorne and John Andrews, children of the owner.

KOAT finally won the ratings war in the early 1970’s after Tom Doyle and George Morrison left the scene. Since then each station has taken its turn at being on top of the heap.

Numbers are important to the front office and the sales teams. They must have facts & figures to sell time.

To those of us on the street, covering the news – we knew when people were watching – because they’d recognize us in the grocery store (or across the counter at the package store that was selling us beer on Sunday before it was legal).

I call that, The Recognition Rating. It still exists for anchors and other on-air folks who have been around for more than a year.

The Recognition Rating lasts a long time…I haven’t been on the air regularly in almost 30 years and last week on two different occasions people stopped me to say hi, and wonder why I left TV.

Times change. For the most part now, field reporters come and go – with little sense of duty to inform the community (they'd rather look good for the live shot). For that, the viewing public, we all suffer.

Some of the field reporters are good and go on to bigger & better things -remember David Gregory working at TV-13 in Albuquerque and Kate Snow working at TV-7?

Other field reporters just go; to another market that will pay them a little bit more – many hoping that someday they too might benefit from The Recognition Ratings.