KHON maintains hold
on local TV top spot

But the station's dominance
of local news ratings ebbs

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By Erika Engle
eengle@starbulletin.com

Each general manager of network-affiliated television stations in Honolulu found reasons to crow about the just-released Nielsen Media Research ratings.

The race between the so-called money shows, the 6 and 10 p.m. local newscasts, grew closer as KHON's significant lead continued to erode. It is the last rating period before KHNL is to begin its 10 p.m. news on time. It currently delays its programming to run past the time other stations' newscasts begin.

"We're working on all of our newscasts at many levels and look at this ratings book as a beginning," said Rick Blangiardi, Hawaii market senior vice president for Emmis Communications Corp., which owns both KHON and KGMB. The ratings are Blangiardi's first since taking over the two stations in September.

For the 10 p.m. news, KGMB and KHNL benefit from strong lead-in programming by CBS and NBC, respectively, he said. KHON is a Fox affiliate.

"Joe Moore's performance at 10 with the lead-in is very strong," Blangiardi said. "I'm not looking at anything as troublesome right now."

At 6 p.m. ABC affiliate KITV regained ratings, share and demographics it lost in the May rating period, "and at 10 we did pretty good considering the ABC lead-ins, to be a point out of second place," said Mike Rosenberg, KITV president and general manager.

He was also happy to have staved off competition from KHON's new local news show at 5 p.m., as KITV's Gary Sprinkle and Pamela Young stayed on top with a 6 rating and 17 percent share of the TV audience. KHON's 5 p.m. show, launched in July and anchored by Leslie Wilcox and Ron Mizutani, garnered a 6 rating but one less share point than KITV, which also fared better in demographic measurements.

"We don't sell off households (ratings and share), we sell off demos," Rosenberg said.

A rating point is 1 percent of the population, while share is the percentage of households watching television who are tuned to a particular station.

KHNL Vice President and General Manager John Fink was pleased by the growth at the station, long an underdog in the local news battle. "We're the only guys that grew from last November," he said. "Our big growth was from a 6 to an 8 (rating) at 10," which put the station's news in second place.

This rating period included the too-close-to-call election. From 6:30 to 10 p.m. on election day, Nov. 5, KHON was far and away the ratings winner, garnering a 15 rating with a 25 share. KITV followed with an 8 rating and 13 share. Close behind was KHNL with a 7 rating and 11 share.

"We did more than double the combined audiences of KITV and KHNL," KHON's Blangiardi said. "Quite frankly the coverage we provided that night makes its own statement about the equity KHON has with the marketplace with respect to its credibility in breaking news."

"That night's coverage, knowing the effort that went on and the execution that took place made it probably the most rewarding experience in the whole book," he said.