The demise of the TV network news broadcast is a possibility that has been hovering in the cultural ether for years.
   Prognosticators predicted that the round-the-clock, at-your-convenience news format of cable news channels would steal away viewers. Network news would become a dinosaur.
   Now CNN says it has the statistics to prove that its viewership is growing at the expense of network news, and that the trends point to a significant shift in television news preferences towards cable news channels.
   At its upfront presentations, CNN sales executives have been touting the most dramatic year-over-year growth for cable news and the quickest acceleration of broadcast erosion ever.
   The recent pitch to advertisers comes as cable television reaches another landmark. In April, cable channels beat network television in total audience for the first time in broadcast history.
   Larry Goodman, President of News Sales for Turner Broadcasting, points to two trends to show that CNN is gaining viewers at the expense of network news.
   “One is the overall expansion of news viewers in the post-9/11 viewing period,” Goodman says. “The second is the dramatic year over year shift from broadcast having a dominant share of news ratings points to cable having a dominant share of news ratings points.”
   CNN says that in 2001, cable news saw its share of gross ratings points increase from 45.3 percent to 59.9 percent. Network news, excluding prime-time newsmagazines, saw its share of gross ratings points fall from 54.7 percent to 40.1 percent.
   In other words, while the ratings of the nightly network news shows continue to dwarf those of all the cable news channels during that half hour period, cable news is gaining in viewership.
   What’s more, CNN says that more new viewers of news are tuning in to cable for their fix.
    CNN commissioned a custom migration study from Nielsen Research that tracked news viewership in the months before and after the September 11 attacks.
   The study found that of 10.3 million homes that were not news viewers before September 11, 5.7 million of them began watching news in the month afterwards, and half of them were adults 18-49.
   Goodman compares the trends in news viewership to the trends previously observed in viewership of children’s programming.
    “A couple of years ago you had Nickleodeon versus the networks, and in a relatively short period of time, the balance had shifted from network to cable providers,” says Goodman.
   More important, Goodman says, the CNN study disproves the network news broadcasts’ claim that they were the news source of choice after 9/11.
   “The custom migration study suggested that audience gains didn’t go to the networks, but rather that they went to cable and stayed with cable,” Goodman says.
    CNN’s play for recognition comes as a blow to network news, who have seen their relevancy questioned despite posting gains in ratings from last year. Over the past month, ABC’s nightly news ratings were up 11 percent from 2001, while NBC’s ratings were up seven percent.
   At the press conference yesterday to announce that Tom Brokaw will be staying as anchor of NBC Nightly News through the 2004 Presidential election, NBC executives emphasized the high ratings of the network news after 9/11 as evidence of their vital social function.
   NBC news personality Brian Williams, who was announced as Brokaw’s successor as anchorman, said of the importance of network news, “30 million people still come here every night. It’s a place where nine months ago, for horrible reasons, everyone was reminded why they come here every night.”
   The 36 million combined viewers of nightly network news is more than ten times the combined audience for all the cable news channels during that same time period, and also trumps the 30 million unique viewers who watch cable news sometime during the day.
   CNN’S Goodman responds that the network news’ emphasis on total audience obscures the fact that cable news has been growing in viewership while network news has been declining.
   “The broadcasts always want to focus on average minute ratings, because on reach potential, CNN can stack up favorably against any network competition,” says Goodman.
    Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says that it’s not valid for cable news to bill its increases in viewership as proof of the decline of broadcast news.
    “Network news is up relative to where it was a year ago. Morning news is way up relative to where it was a year ago,” says Rosenstiel.
   “It may be that CNN is trying to compare apples and oranges because they have been traditionally comparing apples to apples, and their apples have not been doing as well as Fox’s apples,” says Rosenstiel.
  Rosenstiel doesn’t think that news viewership is following the same trends as were observed in children’s programming.
   “If you have all day to work on 18 minutes of news, it’s going to be a better product than any 24-hour a day coverage could be,” says Rosenstiel.
    CNN’s Goodman, for his part, sees increased opportunity for cable news when the network news anchors hand over the reins, as Brokaw will do in November of 2004.
   “The decline in audience is evident every time one of the anchors goes on hiatus,” Goodman says.
   “The feeling is that there’s no one in the bullpen.”

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