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punted for a week
ABC and CBS join NBC in postponing season
By Kevin Downey
The fall television season will be postponed at least another week, to Monday, Sept. 24, as the Big Three networks continue their coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and the surrounding investigation into the historic disaster.
Both ABC and CBS yesterday pushed back by at least a week the rollout of their new fall shows, following NBC’s decision a day earlier to postpone its premiere week.
ABC over the coming week had been set to debut season premieres of a handful of returning shows, along with a number of new shows, amid hopes of spurring a rebound from a 20 percent dip in its adult 18-49 rating last season.
Shows affected by the postponement include "Dharma & Greg" and the new Steven Bochco drama "Philly."
The midseason hit "My Wife & Kids" and the long-running "The Drew Carey Show" show were set to premiere next week, as was the second edition of ABC’s youngest-skewing show, "The Mole II."
Season premieres of the new Friday drama "Thieves" and the returning "Once & Again" were moved back a week too.
"It basically pushes out one set of reruns for the networks," says Deana Myers, an analyst at Paul Kagan Associates.
"There’s lots of space during the season. ABC was supposed to resume sometime yesterday afternoon, and the networks will probably ease back into programming and news."
A delay of the fall television season is not unprecedented.
The broadcasters agreed last year to begin the season on Oct. 2 so that all the networks could more fairly compete after NBC finished its coverage of the Sydney Olympics.
An official postponement requires the agreement of all seven broadcast networks, including Pax, the WB, and UPN.
Nielsen began discussions with the networks yesterday and expects to have a final decision today.
Meanwhile a number of schedule changes were announced for major sporting events.
Major League Baseball postponed all of its games for this week from Tuesday through Sunday.
The NFL postponed the second week of its season, which included 14 games set to air on Sunday, in addition to ABC’s "Monday Night Football."
"It’s going to have a big impact on the NFL," says Myers. "That’s top primetime programming for ABC, and it will also affect CBS, Fox, and ESPN."
The PGA canceled a number of golf events, including the American Express Championship, which was to be played in St. Louis. That was the first tournament canceled by the PGA in five years.
PGA games set for Wednesday, including the Tampa Bay Classic, the Vantage Championship senior game, and the Buy.com Oregon Classic were canceled.
The LPGA’s Safeway Classic was also canceled.
The National Hockey League pushed its preseason games back one week until Sept. 17, and NASCAR canceled the Winston Cup race in New Hampshire and the Indy Racing League’s Chevy 500.
Major League Soccer canceled the remainder of its season and a number of other sporting events were postponed or canceled.
The networks have been estimated to be losing tens of millions of dollars per day in ad revenue as news coverage continues with no commercials.
Despite the loss, this week will surely go down as one in which television viewing approached all-time viewing records.
On Tuesday, just under 80 million people watched television, and about 69 percent of homes were watching TV, compared to about 61 percent the Tuesday before.
Over 60 million people watched the Big Four networks on Tuesday, as the attacks were first being reported, and just under 19 million watched the cable news networks.
And while Fox News posed a serious challenge to No. 1-ranked CNN, by coming within thousands of viewers of it during the Chandra Levy investigation, viewers overwhelmingly turned to CNN for coverage of the attacks on New York and Washington.
An average of 6.44 million people watched CNN from 10:30 on Tuesday morning through 2:00 a.m. the next day.
Fox News had about 3.05 million viewers, CNN’s Headline News had 1.96 million, and MSNBC had 1.92 million viewers.
Just over 10.1 million people watched Bush’s five-minute speech on CNN, compared to 5.64 million on Fox. And during the evening, CNN’s audience was more than double that of Fox News's, with 8.29 million viewers to 4.07 million.
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CABLE
NEWS NETWORKS |
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Daypart/Network |
Rtg% |
Households |
Viewers |
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10:30 a.m.-2 a.m. |
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CNN/U.S. |
5.5 |
4,622,000 |
6,439,000 |
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Fox News |
2.9 |
2,093,000 |
3,048,000 |
|
Headline News |
1.7 |
1,359,000 |
1,955,000 |
|
MSNBC |
2.1 |
1,432,000 |
1,922,000 |
|
CNBC |
0.8 |
653,000 |
849,000 |
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President Bush's Speech |
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CNN/U.S. |
7.3 |
6,189,000 |
10,104,000 |
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Fox News |
4.7 |
3,364,000 |
5,643,000 |
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Headline News |
2.5 |
2,034,000 |
3,402,000 |
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MSNBC |
2.8 |
1,908,000 |
2,802,000 |
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CNBC |
1.0 |
770,000 |
1,073,000 |
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6-11p.m. |
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CNN |
6.5 |
5,463,000 |
8,286,000 |
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Fox News |
3.6 |
2,571,000 |
4,074,000 |
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Headline News |
2.1 |
1,711,000 |
2,649,000 |
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MSNBC |
2.4 |
1,693,000 |
2,357,000 |
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CNBC |
1.0 |
777,000 |
1,068,000 |
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Source: CNN, based on Nielsen Media Research data |
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September 14, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
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