And the winner is. . .Despite having ancient looking graphics that can be seen from across the street, a set that looks like it is from a station in Iowa, and a love of sprinkling kicker stories throughout the newscast, WABC’s Eyewitness News and the station overall is yet again at the top of the ratings among the big three for February.
Most notably, WNBC has lost almost half of its viewership in the early evening news race no doubt due to the tinkering by soon to the soon to depart senior vice president of news Dan Forman. (Perhaps it is time to bring back the 1980s style Live at Five?) There was also a bit of slippage at 11, loosing a ratings point compared to last year and Chuck and Sue are in second place 1.7 points behind Eyewitness News this year.
Over at WCBS, they picked up some viewers, most notably in the early evening finishing second, but they slipped compared to last year at 11.
No word on the 10 p.m. race yet. We should note that the Nielsen Ratings are like any poll and may not reflect actual viewer trends, but without them there would be no money to be made. Plus Nielsen actually measures viewership every day so the traditional February Sweeps are basically a charming throwback.
Speaking of WABC. . .
Channel 7 was the only local station to have a reporter go along with the New York Philharmonic on their trip to North Korea. Jim Dolan did a good job with his series of reports this week from the totalitarian nation.
Isn’t it obvious?
To answer Richard Huff’s question posed in Friday’s Daily News about WNBC- “Name one person there now who could be the next [Chuck] Scarborough” – we say David Ushery. (And it didn’t even take us half a second to come up with that.) He has the right sort of on screen presence and the proper gravitas that would seem to make him the natural choice to fill those big shoes. Plus he works well with Sue.
