Not necessarily enough news

Elián's sad saga proves no match for Columbine, Kosovo

Deborah D. McAdams -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/8/2000

As much as little Elián's Gonzáles panic-stricken face dominated the news last month, it wasn't enough to boost cable news networks. CNN lost as much as 54% in prime time, and even the usually immune FOX dropped.

Once again, executives say, cable news is feeling the backlash of last April's hot news environment. Back then, bombs were devastating Kosovo, and then two teens took automatic weapons to school in Littleton, Colo., and slaughtered several of their classmates before killing themselves.

"In April of 1999, MSNBC was up 229% in ratings from the previous month," said an MSNBC spokeswoman. "CNN was up 162%, and FOX was up 125%. That's why news networks are down so dramatically now."

Kosovo and Columbine held larger audiences for a longer time than did the tale of Elián, the child caught between government immigration officials and a surreal quasi-kidnapping by his extended family.

All of the news nets slid in overall ratings, for prime time and total day, except for CNBC. Bill Gates may have been the Antichrist on Wall Street, but he saved business news. CNBC had two of its biggest days ever in April even as the rest of the world quietly chugged along. On April 3, the day of the Microsoft decision, CNBC averaged a 0.7/486,000 households over the course of its business day from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Two weeks later, when the fall of the house of Microsoft reverberated through the stock markets, CNBC spiked to a .8/564,000 households. That's nearly twice the network's typical average. As a result, CNBC was up 27% in its business day, but was flat in the traditionally defined 6 a.m. to 6 a.m. total day.

All the news networks suffered a double-whammy in prime time: Slow news and a red-hot Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Even USA, which had nine of the 10 highest-rated programs for the month, was off 8% this April compared to last.

For MSNBC, last April was the network's highest-rated month ever.

"We had 30 days in a row of record-setting ratings," said Eric Sorenson, vice president and general manager of the network. Sorenson saw the numbers coming, but he launched an ambitious new daytime show on April 3. HomePage, a live, three-hour Oxygen-like, grrrrl-powered version of Headline News, is stripped weekdays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The time slot is 33% down from last year but holding steady compared to the first quarter of 2000.

The numbers come in just as the news networks are engaged in upfront ad sales. As usual, network executives pooh-poohed the notion that advertisers would be repelled by the ratings.

"There isn't any aspect of our business that measures against a previous period. It's a press conceit to tell where we are, but in cable news, it's particularly silly" because news cycles affect all news networks, Sorenson said.

Media buyers actually do confirm that demographics outweigh overall ratings, and those who buy news buy it for the demo.

"Our business is 25 to 54 adults," Sorenson noted. That demo continues to inch up for MSNBC, from 84,000 in January to 92,000 in April. "That's our CPM."

Relentless pursuit of a given demo is really the most likely path to growth for any of the news networks, given it's one of the most saturated categories in cable. Otherwise, they'll remain slaves of breaking news.