TV News for Early Risers (or Late-to-Bedders)

Last season, the big battle in television was fought over late night. This season, the battleground is shaping up to be the early morning. Very early.

The television business, it seems, is learning what the predawn buyers at the fish market already know: starting the day earlier can be a competitive advantage.

tv_anchor.jpg
ALT1040

Stations in Boston, New York, Washington and other cities are adding 4:30 a.m. newscasts this month, joining a backward march that started in earnest a few years ago. And those are not even the earliest. One station in New York, WPIX, will move up its start time to 4 a.m. on Sept. 20.

In catering to the earliest of the early risers, stations are reacting to the behavior patterns that are evident in the Nielsen ratings. Simply put, Americans are either staying awake later or waking up earlier — and either way, they are keeping the television on.

In the past 15 years, the number of households that have a TV set on at 4:30 has doubled, to 16 percent this year from 8 percent in 1995. At 11:30 p.m., by comparison, when most local newscasts end, 44 percent of televisions are on, up 10 percent from the levels 15 years ago.

And although all TV newscasts skew toward older demographics, in New York, the percentage of viewers under 35 watching from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. is higher than at any other time of day, an important part of the advertising pitch for an industry that chases young people. “We’re going to where the viewers are,” said Dave Davis, the general manager of WABC in New York.

Already, three stations in New York have 4:30 a.m. start times. And later this month, WABC and the CBS station, WCBS, will as well. Their viewers are apparently not just insomniacs; news executives say they hear from grateful late-shift workers, suburban commuters and parents of infants (and, yes, the occasional late-night club-hopper).

“Commutes have increasingly cut into what we usually describe as sleep time,” said Bill Carey, the news director of WPIX, an affiliate of the CW.

But the new newscasts are as much a reaction to the economics of local television as they are to changing habits. Local TV revenues plummeted when the recession began, causing many stations to lay off employees. Now they are trying to produce more news with fewer people. Almost uniformly, station executives say they do not add staff members when they add early morning shows.

Some stations do not even have reporters for their earliest hours, instead having anchors introduce the taped reports from their 11 p.m. newscasts. Even when they have reporters out and about, they are largely rehashing the prior night’s news — while standing outside in the dark, no less.

News executives say an earlier start time spurs ratings gains later in the morning, like a snowball rolling down a steep hill.

“It just creates more morning inventory for advertisers, and that’s where TV stations are making their money now, in the morning,” said Steve Ridge, president of the media strategy group for Frank N. Magid Associates, a consultant firm for TV stations.

It also appears to lengthen viewing times over all. Once a household’s television is turned on in the morning, it typically stays on for hours and hours, like a cash register left open for stations to pillage.

Two stations in Chicago made the 4:30 move this summer, joining the NBC affiliate, which has been on at that half-hour since 2007. (NBC calls that newscast “Barely Today,” a riff on the 7 a.m. national morning show, “Today.”) Stations in Philadelphia; Tampa, Fla.; Toledo, Ohio; and Kansas City, Mo.; to name a few, have announced newscasts at 4:30, timed to the start of the new TV season.

In Los Angeles, every station save one already starts at 4:30 a.m., and that one, KCBS, will catch up on Tuesday.

In Las Vegas, the CBS affiliate, KLAS, is already on at 4. “I’m amazed when I drive to work, trying to figure out who’s starting their day and who’s ending,” Dave McCann, one of the 4 a.m. anchors there, remarked to The Las Vegas Review-Journalin June.

The early morning alertness is all the more remarkable when history is taken into account. “Fifteen years ago in local news, we barely had a 6 a.m. news,” said David Friend, the senior vice president for news for the CBS television stations.

Said Mr. Carey at WPIX, “One of the arrogant things about television is that we’d put on the news at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. and expect you to watch it.”

Soon, Mr. Carey’s station will carry newscasts from 4 to 9 weekday mornings, and he is hoping to expand to 10 a.m.

As Jeff Murri, the general manager of WJBK, the Fox station in Detroit, put it, “Local news as the lead into local news is the best possible scenario.”

Watching the news shows for more than, say, an hour at a time would be mind-numbing, what with weather and traffic on a loop every 10 minutes and live reports and features repeated essentially word for word every hour.

“Our task is to get people prepared to get out the door,” Mr. Murri said.

While the Internet has encroached on nearly every corner of the television business, early morning newscasts are somewhat protected, suggested Susan Sullivan, the vice president for news for NBC Local Media. In the morning, she said, “You’re less likely to be getting online — you’re putting on your pants.”

For some stations, the earliest half-hour of news is not profitable on its own. Rather, it is the cumulative lift that makes the start time worth it.

Of the 56 major markets monitored by Nielsen, some markets have many more night owls than others. The Birmingham, Ala., market is relatively wide awake at 4:30, with 26.7 percent of households tuned in. The Salt Lake City market has the lowest percentage, 9.1 percent.

When Mr. Davis was asked if WABC could ever expand to 4 a.m., the way his competitor WPIX is about to, he just let out a hearty laugh. But Mr. Murri, in Detroit, was not laughing.

“I never say never,” he said, adding that “4 a.m., years ago, sounded as crazy as 5 a.m.”

(Note: CNBC is a unit of NBC Universal.)