The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Networks’ morning shows differ
‘GMA’ may beat ‘Today,’ but viewers just watch what they want to see.
The recent announcement that “Good Morning America” beat NBC’S “Today” show for a full week of ratings for the first time in 16 years was kind of big news, although not as big as ABC made it out to be. Neither was it quite up to “Today” producer Jim Bell’s hyperbolic assertion that his show’s winning streak as “one of the most incredible achievements in television history.” ABC cheered, the “GMA” cast posed for pictures, and NBC was magnanimous over a difference of about 31,000 viewers, according to Nielsen.
But what does any of it mean to those viewers, who usually number somewhere between 4 million and 6 million on an average day for each ABC and NBC show, with “CBS This Morning” trailing with about 2.5 million? The easy answer is: not as much as the broadcast networks think, but perhaps more than just which show gets a larger slice of the relatively finite (but very lucrative) ratings pie from one week to the next.
Most likely, NBC will be back on top soon enough by an equally small margin because viewers’ habits die hard, but there’s no getting around the fact that “GMA” has spun itself silly doing whatever it can to energize its show, jettisoning significant news substance along the way. Was there a memo from the top that every “GMA” show has to begin with the screaming yellow “Breaking News” banner? Not a terrible strategy, since information loses its value the moment it’s metaphorically driven off the lot. But much of the time, the breaking news isn’t all that newsy and probably broke on the Internet hours earlier anyway.
Still, the breaking-news gimmick fits the breathless pace of the current incarnation of “Good Morning America” all too well.
George Stephanopoulos usually handles actual news “stories,” which are often no more than a couple of minutes long, with Robin Roberts often reporting human interest stories. The show’s rapid-fire pace is obviously designed to respond to a contemporary viewership with a mass case of attentiondeficit disorder. By the second half hour, “GMA” seems to have taken a smudged page from the HLN playbook, focusing on a lurid child abduction, missing coed or murder case, with commentary from the show’s legal analyst Dan Abrams, often abetted by the queen of scandal mongers herself, HLN’S Nancy Grace.
Once that segment is over, we move toward the second hour, heralded with the arrival of Lara Spencer, who used to host “Antiques Roadshow.” Of- ten, the second hour is dominated by what can only be described as an ABC infomercial for its own evening shows. Too bad “Dancing With the Stars” doesn’t last all year long: No one would have to lift a finger trying to come up with programming for the second hour.
If NBC can’t quite counter the boisterous and unending shilling of “GMA,” it’s in part because the network doesn’t really have that many hot nighttime shows to promote in the morning. “Today” has tried to give the down-for-the-count “Rock Center With Brian Williams” a boost when it can — last week, Ted Koppel showed up to talk about his spot that night on the virtues of the French electoral system. For better or worse, viewers probably want to see how Gavin De Graw feels about getting booted from “DWTS” than hear about how the French elect their leaders.
By the way, did you know that we’re less than 100 days out from the Summer Olympics in London? You do if you’ve been watching “Today,” because NBC once again will cover the Olympics on various platforms. And as further testament to the news value of the summer games, the Comcastowned network has tapped Ryan Seacrest for its coverage team, an obvious pursuit of ratings.
Since 1954, CBS has tried multiple times to compete in the 7-9 a.m. time slot, without much success. The latest attempt is “CBS This Morning,” with hosts Charlie Rose, Erica Hill and Gayle King, and while it’s making incremental weekly gains, it’s still pulling only about half the numbers of each of the other shows. Despite its struggles, “CBS This Morning” deserves a place at the breakfast table. Without question, it is the best of the three network morning shows. But the reasons it’s so good are pretty much the reasons why it hasn’t been able to reverse the long CBS losing streak of morning news shows.
For one thing, “This Morning” often takes its time with a story, even in that valuable first 20 minutes of the show when the pressure is on any morning show to get as much information and as many quick hits out there as possible to hook viewers.
In addition, the show not only celebrates multiple-source stories, as opposed to single subjects, but also has a knack for finding interviewees who may not fit the usual-suspect category. One reason for that is that the show’s low ratings mean that momentarily hot interview subjects, hawking a new film or book, aren’t going to knock at the CBS door first. That ends up being a good thing as often as not, however, because, really, how many times can you listen to Jennifer Aniston tell you how much fun she had making her new rom-com?
If “GMA” edged past “Today” for a week, it’s because that’s what 31,000 more viewers wanted to watch. And if, for every week of the past 16 years, the “Today” show topped the ratings, it’s for exactly the same reason. We shouldn’t be surprised if the one morning news show with some substance can’t get arrested because most viewers really don’t want substance and they don’t want stories that take up too much of their time.
The issue is how we define “news” in the 21st century. Important, life-changing things happen every day, but the proliferation of information outlets has redefined what we consider news. To compete, “GMA” has to have the “DWTS” winners on, as opposed to, say, having an in depth and informative conversation with the speaker of the House. The exploding media landscape is to “blame,” if that’s the right word, but with so many choices out there, viewers can reclaim real news by simply changing the channel.