The February Nielsen TV news ratings for Honolulu have officials at competing stations trumpeting wins and domination—often for the same time slots.

Taken separately, KHON-TV leads in weekday morning news from 6 to 7 a.m., as well as evening newscast ratings at 5, 5:30 and 6 p.m. However, Hawaii News Now, which sometimes simulcasts on KGMB-TV and KHNL-TV and also airs on KFVE-TV at times, boasts that its morning newscast is the leader.

KGMB, KHNL and KFVE entered into a shared services agreement in October and can, per the Nielsen ratings service, combine ratings and household share numbers because the newscasts are identical. Taken together, the stations' newscast beat KHON at 5 p.m. with a nine rating and 25 share points.

The simulcast “;cannibalized a bit of momentum from KGMB,”; said Rick Blangiardi, KGMB/KHNL general manager. Nevertheless, “;we absolutely get to count the whole audience,”; he said. “;They are watching the same product.”;

The stations' advertising is sold separately, however.

KITV also can lay claim to No. 1 at 5 p.m. for advertising purposes, having won the time slot among the sought-after 25- to-54-year-old demographic.

Newscast dominance claims aside, this Nielsen survey might be largely ignored by advertisers buying future air time because the Super Bowl and the Olympics caused massive fluctuations in viewing habits.

“;Actually, we do tell buyers mainly to throw out the February book (ratings survey) once every four years,”; said Mike Rosenberg, president and general manager of KITV.

However, the second half-hour of its 10 p.m. news was “;up in the demographics from when we had 'Seinfeld' in there,”; he said. “;People hung around and watched”; the full hour.

KGMB and KHNL, the CBS and NBC affiliates that aired the huge TV events, are led by Blangiardi. “;Obviously we're beneficiaries of the Super Bowl and Olympics, but ... without all the blocking and tackling, on the day-in and day-out stuff ... the market has their head around what we're doing,”; he said.

At KHON, President and General Manager Joe McNamara was happy with the station's ratings performance, given the competitions' “;one-time-only counter-programming.”;

“;I firmly believe that we couldn't be in a better position to grow our audience, with how prepared we are internally with staffing and all the on-air improvements we have made, including multiple news sets, state-of-the-art graphics and, of course, our locally produced news packages,”; he said in a written statement.

Another huge television event was the tsunami on Feb. 27.

“;The numbers were staggering,”; said Hawaii News Now News Director Chris Archer. The stations' calculations show about 300,000 people, or “;roughly 20 percent of the state's population,”; were tuned in to the stations' live news coverage simulcast across three TV stations and online.

“;When you see something every news organization prays for, when you see such dominance in a moment of real importance, you know where you are with the viewers,”; Blangiardi said. “;This is a great book for us.”;

In two weeks, Nielsen will release a revised version of the February survey with Olympics data excluded to provide a “;true reading of the day-to-day stuff,”; KITV's Rosenberg said.