Williams and NBC News face stiff competition and falling ratings
NEW YORK -- One of the small indignities of a high-paying television job is rising after getting home from Texas at 3:05 a.m. for a conversation about why your ratings are going south.
Brian Williams dutifully does it, weary voice and all, even if he and NBC can't explain why after two years on top his "Nightly News" broadcast has suddenly been eclipsed by ABC and Charles Gibson.
"It is predictable," Williams said, the morning after anchoring his newscast from Fort Worth. "This is why I haven't allowed any champagne toasts in the newsroom when the ratings have been flawless and spectacular and joyous. This is a back-and-forth dogfight."
Tough competition keeps everyone sharp and benefits the viewers, he said.
ABC's "World News" has been the most popular newscast for eight straight weeks, and 15 out of the last 19, according to Nielsen Media Research. Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News" is a distant third.
All the attention paid to Couric's tough start at CBS has overshadowed what's been going on at NBC. In Couric's first 39 weeks at CBS, she's lost 287,000 viewers from the average of a year ago, a drop of 4 percent from predecessor Bob Schieffer's audience. At the same time, "Nightly News" lost 533,000 viewers, or 5 percent, Nielsen said.
In Williams's first three months after taking over from Tom Brokaw in December 2004, "Nightly News" averaged 10.79 million viewers. In the past three months, it's been 7.66 million. To be fair, the nightly news audience traditionally drops when warm weather arrives, and it has been a slow news period.
Still, that's a lot of missing viewers.
"If I was at NBC, I'd really be quite nervous about the hundreds of thousands of people that have left my audience," said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies the content of network evening newscasts.
Tyndall credits ABC more than he faults NBC. In a sense, Tyndall said, the loss of audience NBC should have anticipated with Brokaw's departure was delayed for two years because of turmoil at ABC -- the death of Peter Jennings, injury to Bob Woodruff, and the departure of Elizabeth Vargas. With Gibson, now there's stability.
Williams, whose "champagne toasts" comment was a sly reference to bottles passed around ABC's newsroom due to recent ratings triumphs, said he leaves it to others to worry about the ratings numbers.
"I, honest to God, couldn't tell you what the ratings are and couldn't tell you that for days on end," he said. "It really is immaterial in a way. There isn't anything we can do on a given day to tweak."
The only major difference among the network newscasts recently was that NBC led its newscast three times with hurricane-related stories, including a Williams visit to New Orleans and an update of the season's hurricane forecast. NBC's rivals did little or nothing on those stories. That's a reflection of Williams' continuing interest in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, and he's convinced the public shares that.
"We worry about what we can worry about, but our numbers are affected by a variety of things we have very little to do with, nothing to do with," said Alexandra Wallace, "Nightly News " executive producer.
The simplest possible explanation, and toughest to deal with: More people want to spend that half hour with Gibson than with Williams.
Gibson, 64, is an older man anchoring a news format favored by older viewers (Williams is 48). He's also more affable and self-effacing on the air, with less starch than the more formal Williams.
NBC has struggled to find a way to show, on the news, the warm, quick-witted Williams that appears in guest shots on "The Daily Show." But Williams has frequently talked about how the news is too serious for him to appear the way he does in other forums.
"Part of me does want the viewer to get to know Brian," Wallace said. "But I don't think that's the primary focus. The primary focus is putting on a journalistically sound, intelligent, well-rounded broadcast."
