DATE: Thursday, March 20, 1997              TAG: 9703200045

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY BONKO

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

THIRD-PLACE WTKR ON DOWNHILL TOBOGGAN RIDE

HERE'S A SHOCKER in local TV: The latest Nielsens show that WTKR's 6 p.m. newscast tumbled into third place, six rating points behind No. 1 WVEC.

The CBS affiliate's ratings fell off sharply during the February sweeps.

Channel 3's newscast at the dinner hour slipped three rating points from November, and six points from the Nielsens of a year ago. A rating point represents 1 percent of Hampton Roads' 631,720 TV households. When you lose six ratings points in a year, you've taken a downhill toboggan ride.

Five months ago, it was a virtual three-way tie for No. 1 at 6 p.m. with but one rating point separating the leaders (NBC affiliate WAVY and ABC affiliate WVEC) from WTKR.

Now comes NewsChannel 3's February fade. What happened?

Did viewers lose interest when the station discontinued its $10,000 ``personal lucky number contest'' at 6? Has the audience tired of Channel 3's rooftop weather reports?

Or are the ratings of February a fluke? A quirk? An aberration?

WTKR's president and general manager, Elden A. Hale Jr., charges that the February Nielsens are ``fatally flawed.'' He says Nielsen undersampled TV house-holds in urban Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News while oversampling in rural, less populated North Carolina counties.

Hale fired off a fax to Colleen White in Nielsen client services pointing out what he calls several irregularities in the latest sampling. Among them: Nielsen put 30 diaries in Dare County, N.C., (10,770 households) and only 34 diaries in Portsmouth (37,890 households).

Is that good sampling, Hale asks?

To White, Hale also inquired, ``What will Nielsen do to rectify these errors? And what steps will be taken to ensure a reliable sample during the May sweeps?''

(A Nielsen spokesman told me that if during the monthlong ratings period there appears to be an imbalance in the sampling, adjustments are made. Diaries are sent to other households.

(And as for future ratings, Nielsen told Hale it will strive for a better representative sample in this market including more reliable estimates of viewing in African-American households.)

While Hale fusses and fumes, his rivals at WVEC and WAVY light up victory cigars. WVEC is first by a rating point at both 6 and 5 with WAVY No. 1 at 11. Says WAVY general manager Ed Munson, ``What had been a close three-way race at 6 has shifted to a two-horse race between WAVY and WVEC.''

Who could blame Hale for being upset when the Nielsen numbers came in? Besides money - ad rates are tied to the ratings - something else is on the line here. It's a measure of how well a media giant is doing in a moderately sized TV market. We're No. 40.

The company that owns WTKR, The New York Times Co., spent heavily to develop WTKR as ``NewsChannel 3,'' and promote it. Hale made significant changes, cutting loose popular personalities Duane Harding, Jim Hale and Carol Horton. At the same time, he embraced co-anchor Tom Randles, signing him to a long-term contract.

Hale brought on such innovations as a daily local magazine show, town-hall type coverage of local issues and more news on weekends. He sold the station as the place where local news comes first.

After all that, he did not expect the Nielsen bombshell - numbers suggesting viewers may be less than passionate about the NewsChannel 3 format, with the 6 p.m. newscast six full rating points behind No. 1 WVEC.

Other stories in the numbers:

Bringing in Terry Zahn and Regina Mobley to replace the retired Jim Kincaid and the departed Cynthia Lima as co-anchors at 6 was good thinking. Channel 13's ratings at 6 have held up and even increased a bit in the last two sweeps' periods.

WAVY's early-morning newscast is all but invincible. It beat out the competition for the 20th consecutive rating period.

Just as WAVY is unbeatable at wake-up time, WTKR at noon more than doubles the ratings of the competition. However, the numbers at noon, as well as those at 5 p.m. and 11, are off a bit for WTKR, reinforcing Hale's claim that the February sweeps are fallible. He notes that the ratings for ``Seinfeld'' at 7:30 p.m. - strong in the last two sweeps - are off two rating points this time around.

``Today'' on NBC is the highest-rated national morning show in Hampton Roads. Oprah Winfrey's lead over Montel Williams in the battle of talk-show superhosts at 4 p.m. is three ratings points, and in late-night TV, David Letterman's ``Late Show'' is two full rating points behind ``Nightline'' and Jay Leno on ``Tonight.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

THE 6 P.M. NEWS

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

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