Seeking Comfort in A.M.

Conventional wisdom holds that viewers want their morning television shows to be warm and familiar, like a “comfortable pair of slippers,” says “Good Morning America” executive producer Shelley Ross.

Well, the traditional “Good Morning America” fireplace is back, but viewers had better not get too cozy. “GMA” on Monday brought in pinch-hitting anchors Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson and a revamped set, but a year from now, the anchors are likely to be replaced and the show is expected to be broadcasting from a new loft-like studio overlooking New York’s glitzy Times Square. It hasn’t been decided whether the homespun fireplace will make the move. Nor should viewers get too comfortable with CBS’ “This Morning.” It, too, is considering new digs, possibly an outdoor-fronted studio in a plaza, off New York’s Fifth Avenue and across the street from Central Park. There’s also talk of changes in the anchor team of Jane Robelot, who just returned from maternity leave, and Mark McEwen: One long-shot scenario has Bryant Gumbel, who is under contract to CBS, returning.

So much for settling in. The network morning shows, which can be cash cows for their network parents and extremely lucrative for a network’s affiliate stations, are in a period of turmoil, as “GMA” seeks to stop its ratings free-fall and “This Morning” tries to claw its way out of the ratings basement it has occupied for more than two decades. Meanwhile, NBC’s “Today” keeps perking along, above the fray. NBC’s most profitable program, according to people familiar with the situation, “Today” generates about $240 million in revenues and an estimated $100 million-plus in profits. There’s also an estimated $20 million more in combined profits for the stations that NBC owns in cities such as Los Angeles and New York.

After a first-place run from 1989 to 1994, “GMA” has tumbled, falling 25% in the last two years alone, a stunning drop given the notoriously slow pace with which morning viewers change their habits. The week of Dec. 28, 1998, “GMA” even dipped below CBS’ “This Morning,” which hadn’t finished out of third since the week of Jan. 17, 1977.

“GMA’s” woes have been attributed to viewers tiring of anchors Joan Lunden and Gibson, and an attempt to add more hard news to the show after ABC News took over control of the program from ABC Entertainment in 1995. The problems were compounded by a rapid succession of producers, each with a different vision. The traditional formula deteriorated: Hard news began popping up in the 8 a.m. hour in place of pieces designed to appeal to older women and stay-at-home moms; consumer news features aired in the 7 a.m. hour where younger viewers, dashing off to work, were accustomed to seeing politics. Local Los Angeles anchor Lisa McRee replaced Lunden in September 1997; “GMA” news reader Kevin Newman replaced Gibson last May.

The anchor team never clicked, and, its audience defecting in droves, ABC felt it had to try something radical. So, on Monday, it put star prime-time anchor Sawyer and Gibson in for an indefinite period of time, while it hunts around for permanent replacements. ABC hasn’t given a hint as to whom those co-hosts will be, but in the meantime it has named two junior family members: news anchor Antonio Mora, a Cuban native and former corporate lawyer, and weatherman Tony Perkins, an anchor of the morning news program at Fox’s local Washington station.

A Heavy Dose of Hard News

If the first few days’ ratings boost holds--through Wednesday “GMA” is up about 30% over fourth-quarter 1998--the program will be back to about where it was when it first decided it had to shake things up. So far, ABC still has a heavy quotient of hard news: A report on fighting in Kosovo and an exclusive interview with the new Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, both aired after 8 a.m., for example. And a new ad campaign for the show plugs intelligence, with its tag line “Start Smarter.”

ABC Vice President Phyllis McGrady, the executive in charge of the broadcast, says the Hastert interview aired at 8:09 because the speaker had insisted it be taped in advance, making it less newsworthy on the day following the president’s State of the Union address. A former “GMA” producer who helped pioneer the “hard-news-at-7; consumer-parenting-and-medical-news-at 8” formula, McGrady says she wouldn’t rule out airing harder news at the same time in the future, but says what’s most important is returning to “a formula that the viewer can count on: This is who the show is and what the show is.”

ABC got high marks for making its temporary anchor changes, which many critics called an improvement over the pairing of McRee and Newman. But the network still runs a sizable risk of alienating viewers yet again when it introduces a new team.

“The important thing in morning shows is to have consistency--in news, in familiarity of anchors, in presentation,” says Tammy Haddad, former senior broadcast producer for “Today.” “You can scare off more viewers by continual changes than you attract.”

McGrady says the show is attempting to return to a behind-the-scenes stability in how it approaches the news, from which guests are booked to how it’s written. The upcoming changes in anchor and set are “something I just have to deal with,” she says. “Is it the perfect thing to do? No. On other hand, we felt we had to make a change.”

CBS’ “This Morning” has managed to at least hold its own by sticking to its own basic format for two years, while shoring up its hard news reports and loosening up its hosts. “We decided to stick to a plan,” says executive producer Al Berman, who has worked to convince key CBS News correspondents, usually focused on the flagship “CBS Evening News,” to appear live in the morning.

Morning viewers want “comfort, family, intelligence and personality,” he says, adding that viewers are “listening more than watching.” That means, if the show has a dramatic picture, it has to be more descriptive. “[It has to] send an audio cue to come on over.”

Little Movement Seen in CBS’ Numbers

CBS has a tough road--a full 72% of CBS stations run mostly local news programming in the first hour, from 7-8 a.m., taking just a few network reports and then the full network show from 8-9 a.m. And, while a nice ego boost, CBS’ recent second-place win didn’t represent huge gains. The CBS ratings have improved modestly in the last couple years and revenues are up sizably, but “This Morning” hasn’t been able to capitalize on “GMA’s” problems. So far this season, CBS is reaching 1% more viewers than a year ago. Berman declines to comment on any pending changes. “Our strategy is slow but steady . . . If we stay pat, we’re going to lose.”

Meanwhile, the big beneficiary of the “GMA” turmoil has been NBC’s “Today” show; it’s reaching 4% more households this season than a year ago and 1% more viewers. (The loser has been network television: Nielsen Media Research numbers show that nearly 500,000 people have just tuned out network morning shows altogether, with the season-to-date three-network combined average audience at 12.27 million, compared to 12.74 million a year ago.)

Jeff Zucker, executive producer of “Today,” says diplomatically that he hopes the “GMA” changes succeed: “The more competition we have, the better we are.” Besides having a strong anchor team in Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, and a “secret weapon” in weatherman and outdoor crowd-wrangler Al Roker, Zucker has been a master at taking the tried-and-true morning formula and executing it well. Many of the elements were pioneered by “GMA.” “I’m not shy about borrowing, if something works,” he says. “We came up with an understanding of who was watching when and what they wanted and programmed for that.”