Sports and entertainment have long ruled as the consistent programming of choice for the vast majority of American TV viewers. But on Tuesday night, politics took top billing in Chicago.
An average of nearly 890,000 Chicago-area households tuned in to the presidential debate offered on CBS-Ch. 2 and ABC-Ch. 7, according to Nielsen Media Research, easily beating the combined audience for the sports and drama broadcast by the market’s NBC, Fox, WB and UPN stations. When Public Broadcasting’s WTTW-Ch. 11 is included, the debate audience fell just shy of 1 million households, or 42 percent of the sets in use.
Channel 5’s broadcast of the New York Yankees-Oakland Athletics baseball playoff game drew an audience of about 150,000, and Fox’s premiere of “Dark Angel,” which ran during the same two-hour period of the debate, was watched by about 295,000. The average audience for WGN’s broadcasts of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and the 9 o’clock news was about 220,000 over the time period, according to Nielsen.
The ratings numbers seem to confirm public interest in a presidential race that may turn out to be the closest since 1960. But the fractured coverage, with two of the Big Four networks opting out of live coverage, has rekindled the debate over the public service obligations of broadcasters. The trend in recent election years, including this one, is clear: Many broadcasters are abandoning political reporting in the belief the public is not interested.
Diminished broadcast network coverage of the political conventions–and now debates–ceding them to the cable news channels, has underscored this disinvestment. Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard took NBC and Fox to task in an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Tuesday, saying that as “trustees of the public airwaves, the networks must do more than just entertain.”
“If NBC was able to cut away from the crucial fifth game in the 1994 NBA finals to follow O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco around Los Angeles, surely the networks can find a way to justify pre-empting a baseball game or a TV show so that Americans can more wisely choose their next president,” Kennard said.
Larry Wert, general manager of NBC-Ch. 5, said he did not think Channel 5 or NBC was shirking its responsibilities. “We feel the debate was fully available to market viewers on multiple outlets,” Wert said, noting it was aired on MSNBC and tape-delayed on Channel 5 at 12:35 Wednesday morning. (The average Channel 5 audience for the red-eye special was about 19,000 households.)
The debate over public service obligations is a sensitive issue for broadcasters and their chief lobbying arm, the National Association of Broadcasters. The NAB publishes a regular newsletter trumpeting the public service efforts of TV stations, such as the Sept. 13 airing of the Hillary Rodham Clinton/Rick Lazio debate by all eight NBC affiliates in New York state. A check Wednesday showed that all but one–WPTZ-TV in Plattsburgh–chose baseball over Tuesday night’s debate.
Dear Mr. Hoover: It probably comes as no surprise that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was not officially a big fan of Playboy magazine, which built a business and a place in American history by challenging the sexual, cultural and political norms of the nation. But now, thanks to APBnews.com, it comes to light that the FBI had someone on the government payroll whose job it was to scour the pages of Playboy every month, ostensibly to search for references to Hoover and the agency.
The 213-page file, which APBnews.com obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and has placed on its Web site, reveals the bureau’s not-surprising animosity toward Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Page 63, however, offers a tantalizing tidbit.
In a Sept. 5, 1963, letter addressed to Hoover at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the New York Playboy Club offered the director special access to the club whenever he was in New York.
“At Mr. Hefner’s request, we are enclosing a special Celebrity Key which will make it possible for you and your friends to visit the Club anytime during your stay,” the letter said.
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“The Club is in full swing beginning for lunches on weekdays at 11:30 a.m., through the afternoon cocktails, dinner and a full evening of entertainment winding up with a breakfast buffet, and a last round just before the 4 a.m. closing,” Playboy told Hoover. The FBI file contained a copied photo of the key, emblazoned with the Playboy bunny and stamped No. 3978.
Hoover did not respond, and a spokeswoman for Playboy Enterprises Inc. in Chicago said no records were kept to determine whether Hoover ever took Hef up on the offer.