Consider for a moment last Monday evening at 10 o`clock. On television, the Bears were losing to the St. Louis Cardinals on Channel 7, the Cubs were beating the Houston Astros on Channel 9, local radio personality Jonathon Brandmeier was playing host to ”The Late Show” on Fox Television (Ch. 32), and there were newscasts on Channel 2 and Channel 5.
What were you watching? And what about your neighbors?
Understand that in Chicago a rating point represents 30,000 households. A share is a percentage of sets in use tuned to a particular station.
At 10 p.m., the football game had a 43 rating and a 59 share. The Cubs`
game had a 6.4 rating and a 9 share.
Memo to Dallas Green: Re-sign Andre Dawson.
The Channel 2 newscast had a 10.8 rating and a 15 share, while Channel 5 had an 8.4/11. And Johnny B., who rang up some big ratings numbers the last time he fronted ”The Late Show,” had a 3.3 rating and a 4 share in that quarter-hour.
For the record, WLS-Ch. 7 followed its pro football ratings triumph with one of the most news-free newscasts in local broadcast history. Starting at about 10:45, Channel 7 opened with a long ”live” segment on the just-completed game at Soldier Field, then reported a spot of news on events in the Persian Gulf and on AIDS victim Ryan White.
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Then, back to the National Football League for a hard-hitting feature on the fate of Bears rookies facing Tuesday`s roster cuts. Then the weather, followed by, that`s right, sports.
Having acquired broadcast rights to the football team`s four exhibition games this year, the ABC station has all but come unglued in its relentless self-promotion. Another week on the gridiron and the news anchors will be wearing Bears helmets to go with their Channel 7 lapel pins.
Sampling
– Programming strategists at NBC tempted fate this fall by scheduling the hit sitcom ”Family Ties” on Sunday night, moving the Michael J. Fox vehicle out of the comfort of the network`s Thursday night lineup.
”Family Ties,” led by ”The Cosby Show” and followed by ”Night Court” and ”Cheers,” gave NBC a full night of shows that turned up at the top of the ratings ladder with staggering regularity.
With just a hint of the bully, network programming chief Brandon Tartikoff opted to take a chance on moving ”Family Ties” and challenging CBS and ”Murder, She Wrote.” For the last couple of years, Sunday night, with
”60 Minutes” and Angela Lansbury, has been the only night of the week supplying any prime-time comfort to CBS programmers.
Tartikoff is looking for another night of prime time to dominate, and the shift of ”Family Ties” also is seen by some industry wizards as a way to hurt CBS and snap the momentum of the fledgling Fox Television network and its Sunday-night lineup of first-run shows.
As it happens, a posse of Fox programmers used to work at NBC. When asked about ratings vengeance, Tartikoff smiles and says he never thinks about Fox when he thinks about television.
Back to ”Family Ties” and ”Murder, She Wrote.” CBS won the first head-to-head confrontation last Sunday, finishing 11th in the weekly A.C. Nielsen ratings while ”Family Ties” wound up 27th. But the NBC show was within 5 share points of ”Murder, She Wrote”, and NBC researchers say that kind of margin will suffice.
”If we stay within 4 share points of `Murder` with `Family Ties` on Sunday, we`ll win the season,” an NBC researcher contended. And the season has not yet begun.
– You have to wonder what sort of message the newly minted Museum of Broadcast Communications at River City is trying to send.
Open to the public for just a few months, the museum`s first major exhibition will be devoted to a retrospective of award-winning television commercials. Is ”Selling Fast Food Restaurants” and ”Hooper White`s 50 Years of Advertising” what the much-heralded ”Chicago school” of television all about?