Channel 4 News Retains Ratings Lead, Barely Beating Channel 7

The local TV news dynasty that Jim Vance and Doreen Gentzler built is shakier than ever, but it has held on for another ratings victory.

Vance and Gentzler -- the WRC (Channel 4) anchor team that has led the area's most popular TV newscast for more than a decade -- stayed on top with viewers in May, although just barely, and with no thanks to the station's parent network, NBC.

Once-dominant News4 has been losing viewers for years, but it had enough to win again at 11 p.m. and 6 p.m. -- the most competitive and heavily watched daily time periods. In both cases, News4 led up-and-coming WJLA (Channel 7) by a margin of just 3 percent, or roughly 4,000 viewers.

The 11 p.m. race was so close that it was in doubt until Wednesday, the final night of the rating period.

May used to be the most important of the three major "sweeps," the month-long ratings periods whose results helped stations establish their advertising rates. Although the concept has faded somewhat with the advent of highly detailed, year-round electronic ratings, the stations and networks still try to boost ratings during traditional sweeps periods by use of heavy promotion and by airing original episodes of their most popular series.

That latter factor might be WRC's biggest problem: The station's fortunes have declined in tandem with NBC's shriveling prime-time ratings. During May, for example, NBC's programming attracted an average of 113,000 viewers during prime hours, a decline of 15 percent from last May and about half the average that market-leading WTTG (Channel 5) attracted with such ratings magnets as "American Idol." NBC all but conceded the May race, airing three reruns of "Law & Order" during the month.

WRC has also muddled through a round of cost-cutting ordered by NBC. Those cutbacks, which began in late 2006, led to the departure of such familiar figures as entertainment reporter Arch Campbell, anchor Susan Kidd and sportscaster George Michael.

News4's narrow wins in May could be read as an illustration of the massive esteem that Vance, Gentzler and veteran weatherman Bob Ryan enjoy among viewers. While most stations tend to lose viewers after prime time, News4 actually gained them at 11 p.m.: Its late news audience grew 26 percent over its average prime-time audience.

It's unlikely, however, that News4 can hold on much longer without help from its parent. Some relief will likely come this August, when NBC carries the Olympics from Beijing. "We're looking forward to a summer schedule of first-run programming," Michael Jack, WRC's president and general manager, said yesterday in an interview. "Our prime-time programming will improve."

News4 also had the leading local news programs at 5 a.m, 6 a.m. and 5 p.m., although its leads were relatively narrow.

The local news race has become so tight in recent months, in fact, that even runners-up and also-rans could claim victory yesterday.

WJLA said it actually eased ahead of Channel 4 at 6 and 11 p.m. in household ratings, a measure that does not reflect the total number of people watching a program. Without question, however, WJLA's late-afternoon and evening newscasts -- anchored by Maureen Bunyan, Leon Harris and Gordon Peterson -- are gaining rapidly. The station said household ratings for its Bunyan-Peterson newscast at 6 p.m. were up 30 percent, and the Bunyan-Harris newscast at 11 p.m. grew 42 percent compared with last May.

"We have a consistent anchor team, and consistent quality in our stories," said Bill Lord, ABC7's vice president of news. "We've had a good plan the past few years and we've stuck with it. . . . I couldn't be happier."

Although WUSA (Channel 9) remains stuck in fourth place overall at most hours, the station's president and general manager, Allan Horlick, said every station is competitive among the viewers targeted by advertisers -- those ages 25 to 54. "I don't know of a market in the country where three, let alone four stations have a chance to be number one or number four on a given night" among these viewers, he said.

The region's most popular local newscast remained WTTG's program at 10 p.m. on Channel 5, which attracted an average of 219,000 viewers each night during May. Fox5, which faces no direct local news competition at 10 p.m., has had the most-viewed late news broadcast for 69 of the past 70 weeks, said Duffy Dyer, the station's vice president and general manager.

Local newscasts typically account for about one-third of a station's revenue and are a station's most heavily promoted programs.

The late-night news total for the month were: WRC, 143,000 viewers; WJLA, 139,000; WUSA, 119,000; and WTTG, 112,000.