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The News & Observer

By David Ranii, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Jun. 22--Shifting consumer lifestyles have made the competition for early-morning viewers -- and the ad revenue that comes with them -- a major battleground among local TV stations.

"People are waking up earlier to go to work earlier because of their commutes," said Peter Agiovlassitis, vice president and director of media services at Rockett Burkhead & Winslow, a Raleigh advertising agency.

Many of those people want to check out the weather forecast and the traffic situation and find out what happened while they slept. The bottom line: More people are turning on their TV sets to watch the local news at the crack of dawn.

Nielsen Media Research data show the number of Triangle households watching local news broadcasts between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. was 17 percent higher in the TV season that ended last month, compared with the season that ended in May 2000.

"I spend much of my day focused on the morning news," said Rob Elmore, news director at ABC 11 (WTVD). "That's how important it is."

Competition is intense in the Triangle to grab the local news audience before the national morning news shows kick in -- NBC's "Today Show," ABC's "Good Morning America" and CBS' "The Early Show."

WRAL, the local CBS affiliate, is the kingpin in the local news ratings -- the clear leader in the evenings. But in the mornings, it has been waging a seesaw battle with ABC 11 for top-dog status.

The latest Nielsen ratings, for May, reflect this. ABC 11 was the ratings leader from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., while WRAL was No. 1 in the next hour. NBC 17 (WNCN) came in a distant third during both time periods.

Local viewers also have the option of News 14 Carolina, the around-the-clock news station available only to Time Warner Cable subscribers, and Fox 50, which broadcasts local news produced by WRAL at 7 a.m. Both Fox 50 and WRAL are owned by Raleigh's Capitol Broadcasting.

Over the past decade or so, viewers' growing appetite for local morning newscasts has made them an increasingly important source of revenue -- and profits -- for TV stations around the country, said Dave Schutz of Hoffman Schutz Media Capital, which advises clients on broadcast industry deals.

Local news is a crucial revenue source for TV stations because they get to sell all the commercials that run during their newscasts. During network broadcasts, they typically get to sell only one or two minutes of commercial time; the rest are sold by the network.

The larger the audience, the more stations can charge for ads.

Local stations around the country pretty much ignored the early-morning news audience until the 1990s. But those newscasts proved to be so popular that they were gradually extended.

"I remember when the expansion to two hours [of local news in the morning] was unthinkable," said Nannette Wilson, vice president of news at NBC 17.

Morning newscasts also are relatively cheap to produce, because rehashing news from the night before is a staple, said Douglas Spero, a professor of mass communications at Meredith College and a former TV news director.

Still, local stations say they are following a national trend of investing in morning newscasts.

In the late 1990s, WRAL's on-air staff for the morning news consisted of two anchors and a meteorologist, said Rick Gall, news director. Today that staff has expanded to three anchors, a meteorologist, a traffic commentator and two reporters -- accompanied by photographers -- who provide stories from the field.

"So it's not simply a rehash of the night before," Gall said. "Yes, there is some of that. But that's not the bulk of the newscast."

The network news operations -- which want their local affiliates to feed them as large an audience as possible -- also lend a hand. Recently, for example, a snippet of Matt Lauer's exclusive interview with Britney Spears aired on NBC 17's morning news before it was broadcast nationally on "Dateline."

Ignoring the early-morning audience for so long has made it a growth area today, said Jim Hefner, WRAL's general manager. "We sort of relegated [the audience] to radio," he said. "TV is finally giving them something to watch."

Still, morning news viewership significantly lags the evening news. In the latest ratings, the audience watching WRAL, ABC 11 and NBC 17 from 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. was 71 percent of the audience those stations attracted at 11 p.m.

Setting aside the economics of morning newscasts, there's another reason stations want to grab viewers' eyeballs first thing in the morning. It fosters an image of a station that is working (almost) around the clock to bring viewers the latest news.

"A local TV station must create a local brand identity," Schutz said. "They can no longer ride the coat tails of the networks."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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