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in San Francisco
Good-bye KRON, hello KNTV, good-bye viewers
By Gabriel Spitzer
When media bigs gather around a table, one presumes that decent business sense will rule, and it often does, giving both sides a bit more to a lot more for coming together on a deal.
Occasionally, egos, not sense, win out, and on some occasions the results are near-catastrophic.
That may well be the case these days in the San Francisco Bay Area, where NBC and KRON have ended a years-long relationship, with the result that both are suffering.
The ongoing dispute, driven mostly by egos, has been followed with some bewilderment by area residents, as have the typographical hi-jinks of the Examiner newspaper under the Fangs.
On Jan. 1, NBC switched its affiliation from longtime partner KRON, based in San Francisco, to KNTV, based 50 miles south in San José.
The switch was a result of a protracted game of chicken at the bargaining table between KRON and NBC.
The early buzz suggests that both sides lost, each with a tumble in ratings.
"The expectation is that both KRON and KNTV will have a tough time retaining share. I think expectations are that it will be a bumpy road, at least until things settle down," says Brian Perry, vice president and director of local broadcast at the San Francisco-based Publicis & Hal Riney.
KRON had been at or near first place in the ratings race for years, mostly on the strength of its news package.
Since the switch, its newscasts and nightly "Frasier" reruns have done reasonably well, but overall the station’s ratings have dropped about 60 percent from last year, to an average 3.0 rating and a 5 share through Jan. 17.
NBC’s January primetime ratings on KNTV are down 22 percent from KRON’s ratings last January, from 8.3/14 to 6.5/11.
The average-quarter-hour ratings are more troubling: KNTV’s AQH is 2.4/7, down 43 percent from KRON’s 4.2/12 last January.
Some drop-off is certainly to be expected after such a switch. Moreover, KNTV’s transmission tower is much farther south of San Francisco than KRON’s. Because of the Bay Area’s rocky terrain, some 200,000 households in San Francisco and the North Bay cannot get NBC over the air.
KNTV brass insist that they’re pleased with the station’s performance so far, and they point to a pile of success stories to show that the new affiliate is actually exceeding expectations. But local media buyers haven’t been wowed by the numbers.
"They look a little bit low," says Fernando Arriola, group media director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco.
With 2.4 million households representing over six million people, the San Francisco Bay Area is the fifth-largest DMA in the country. A significant ratings shortfall in San Francisco could pull down the network’s national numbers.
"I’ve heard that they’re going to lose half a rating point," says Perry. "That could be huge in terms of dealing with national advertisers and setting national ad rates."
While it’s certainly a little early for serious triage work at NBC, the network has to be taking it seriously, with the Winter Olympics just weeks away.
"I think it’s for real," says Arriola. "On the weaker nights it might make a bigger difference in how their national numbers come in. It puts a little more pressure on the NBC guys on Monday nights and Sunday nights."
NBC’s strong nights, on the other hand, have remained strong despite the switch. Last week KNTV had five of the top-10 primetime shows, including episodes of "ER" and "West Wing," topping out with a 13.7 rating, 22 share for "Friends."
"From my point of view, it’s exceeding whatever we could have hoped for," says Steve Schwaid, head of the transition team for NBC.
As for KNTV’s signal problems, Schwaid emphasizes that no station in the Bay Area has 100 percent coverage. KRON, for instance, missed about 100,000 households, most in South Bay counties like Santa Clara, according to sources at KNTV.
"We have much better coverage in San Francisco than KRON ever had in Santa Clara. Still, we are committed to doing everything we can. At NBC, there are more people working on this problem than you could imagine," Schwaid says.
KNTV has discussed a number of possible solutions, including physically moving its tower to a new location.
KNTV now has better coverage south of San Francisco than KRON did, meaning that the center of NBC’s viewership in the Bay Area has effectively shifted southward. That has raised some concerns that advertisers wishing to reach San Francisco viewers may be leery of buying time on a station whose stronghold is really San José.
"If I was a local advertiser I’d take that into account, without a doubt. I would guess retail would be the biggest industry affected by that. But there’s a lot of new money in Silicon Valley. The shift with the tech industry has balanced that out somewhat," says Goodby’s Arriola.
Local buyers say that both KNTV and KRON are priced with the rest of the market at the moment and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.
"Until KNTV starts showing continuous growth in its primetime, its news product and so on, it’s going to be tough for it to ask a premium above and beyond the rest of the market," says Publicis & Hal Riney’s Perry.
"And whereas KRON was the No. 1 news station in the marketplace, now it's in the middle of the pack. You can’t command a premium when you’re doing the same ratings as several other stations in the marketplace."
But NBC’s switch has the net effect of adding one more competitive station to the market, which should exert downward pressure on prices all around.
"The new affiliate wasn’t seen as that big of a player as it is now. Things have been soft anyway, and now there’s more inventory in the market," says Arriola.
"And there’s a tradeoff there with NBC. You lose some delivery on NBC, but if you want to be in premium programming like ‘Friends’ or ‘ER,’ it might be easier."
January 22, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.
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