Category: State of the Fourth Estate



By George Merlis

The announcement that Diane Sawyer would succeed Charlie Gibson as anchor of ABC’s “flagship” World News Tonight got me thinking about whether or not Ms. Sawyer wasn’t abandoning the real flagship to leap aboard a dinghy being towed in its wake. Just because the three networks say their half-hour pre-primetime newscasts are their flagships does not mean it is true. I would argue that it is the morning shows that are the flagships.


Diane Sawyer interviewing on GMA Set

Let’s start by defining the word. Here’s what Dictionary.com has to say:

Flagship:
a ship carrying the flag officer or the commander of a fleet, squadron, or the like, and displaying the officer’s flag.
the main vessel of a shipping line.
any of the best or largest ships or airplanes operated by a passenger line.
the best or most important one of a group or system. (Emphasis added.)

Before going further, let me do some disclosing because I have a dog in this fight. While one of my early jobs at ABC News was with the evening newscast, most of my time at the network was spent working on Good Morning America. In fact, I was the first line producer hired at GMA back in 1975 and was present at the birth of that show. For seven years I was at the helm of that ship -- flag or not -- first as supervising producer then as executive producer. I was also, as executive producer, present at the 1982 birth of the two-hour version of CBS’ morning effort, originally called The CBS Morning News. By the way, that title was selected to match the title of The CBS Evening News. CBS’s morning effort is now called The Early Show to match the title of the David Letterman-hosted The Late Show. That alone speaks volumes about how the network views what I think should be its journalistic flagship. (When I was there no one in the news division called the end product of what he worked on a “show.” That reeked of show business. Instead we referred to the on-air product as a “broadcast,” as in: “Fine broadcast this morning!”)


Formerly the CBS Morning News


Getting back on track, here’s why I consider the morning shows the flagships:

They are the largest ships operated by the news divisions. With two hours daily for GMA and The Early Show and four hours a day for Today, the morning efforts overwhelm the puny 21 minutes and 30 seconds of editorial time available to the evening newscasts.

The morning shows’ combination of reported pieces and live interviews give them the power to frame a story and let viewers see and hear the participants at greater length than is ever possible on the shorter evening newscasts.

The morning programs air at the start of the day and so can establish the discussion agenda for the rest of the day, while the evening shows summarize that discussion at day’s end.

For the majority of international stories from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, morning shows are better positioned to report breaking stories first.

The wake-up broadcasts earn a ton of money for their networks and news divisions. The New York Times reports ABC saying second-place GMA annually earns “several hundred million dollars.” Today, in first place and with many more commercials to sell over its ever-expanding length, is reported to earn between $400 and $500 million. The evening newscasts each earn much less -- $150 million or so annually, according to the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.


Today: Perhaps Half a Billion Dollars in Annual Earnings

While it appears the evening newscasts draw in more viewers -- nearly eight million for NBC, seven million plus for ABC and slightly over five million for CBS -- each morning show has multiple audiences. When I was executive producing GMA the research told us that the typical viewer watched for 20 minutes. That meant that while ratings indicated we were reaching four million viewers each day, we were actually reaching somewhere between 15 and 20 million individual viewers due to audience churn. But wait, there’s even more. If you walk down the hall of a Holiday Inn between seven and nine a.m. you’ll hear a morning program coming from behind the paper-thin doors of at least a third of the rooms. These viewers -- and viewers in college dorms -- are not counted by the ratings services. There are hundreds of thousands of additional morning viewers -- so cumulatively morning show audiences dwarf the numbers for the evening newscasts.

Two final points: Succession and how the broadcasters are using these shows.

Succession: Even if ABC news management wants to continue calling the shorter, lower-earning, smaller-total-audience World News Tonight its flagship, I’m surprised it had no succession plan for GMA. It is a sad commentary that a piece of broadcast real estate as valuable as my alma mater is so far down management’s priority list that no Diane Sawyer successor was being groomed Where to look? Well, it doesn’t HAVE to be in journalism. When GMA started, ABC Entertainment (which then controlled the show) selected a former actor, David Hartman, to host. David proved not just adept at switching from entertainment to news, he taught his news colleagues a valuable lesson: ask the question the audience wants answered, not the question that shows off how much you know.

Oh, and despite the fact that we were operating out of the entertainment division, GMA scored more than its share of news scoops over the years and regularly scorned the tabloid rot that eats away at news organizations’ credibility today. Which brings me to:

How are the morning shows faring: I can’t answer the question. I don’t know because I find them unwatchable. I have a rule of thumb with entertainment programs: as soon as they introduce a ghost into the cast, I’m outta there. I feel if you lack the creativity to advance a story without a poltergeist, you don’t deserve my attention. My I’m outta there “ghost rule” for informational programs is seeing anything that would be a candidate for the cover of The National Enquirer. I stopped watching ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” last season when the show introduced a ghost. But long before that, I stopped watching the morning shows because of their penchant for tabloid fare. These ought-to-be flagships, alas, have soiled sails. Mornings, I turn on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Now if someone would just turn THAT into a TV show, they would have a flagship worthy of the title.

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