BusinessReport.com

It’s been one year since WVLA-TV entered the local news game and, based on the latest Nielsen Media Research ratings, the upstart newscasts have yet to catch on with Baton Rouge viewers.

Among adults 18-49 years old, WVLA had a rating of 0.2 at 5 and 6 p.m. and did only marginally better at 10 p.m. with a 0.3. That means just two out of every 1,000 households were tuned in at 5 and 6, and just three out of every 1,000 were watching the station’s late news.

By comparison, market leader WAFB-TV had ratings of 6.8 at 5 p.m., 9.7 at 6 p.m. and 12.2 at 10 p.m., which is up a bit from the last ratings period in May. WBRZ-TV, meanwhile, had a 2.5 at 5 p.m., a 3.3 at 6 p.m. and a 4.0 at 10 p.m., which is basically the same as last spring.

Even more disappointing for the local NBC affiliate than its evening ratings are those for its morning show, which debuted last fall. The 6 a.m. newscast, which precedes the network’s popular Today Show, didn’t even register in the Nielsen diaries. In other words, its viewership is statistically nonexistent.

The November book was marginally better for the newscasts on WVLA’s sister station, WGMB-TV. Its newscast at 9 p.m., a time slot that has proven popular for Fox affiliates in other markets, had a 0.5 rating among adults ages 18-49. Its two-hour morning show, which at 7 a.m. goes up against Today and ABC’s Good Morning America, also failed to register.

But while the stations’ news ratings are anemic, both WVLA and WGMB did well overall in the fall sweeps. Both stations have strong prime-time lineups, and WGMB, which last year dominated prime-time programming in the local market, had the benefit of airing LSU’s victory over Ohio State in the BCS Championship Game earlier this month.

Station executives decline to say how much of a premium they were able to charge for spots during the BCS Championship Game. But rate cards distributed to local ad agencies before the teams were decided quoted 30-second spots at $5,000, a price that jumped to $9,000 once LSU made the cut.

Not that any advertiser actually paid that much. Savvy buyers would have negotiated the price down or purchased a package, which would have included other spots as well. Still, it’s safe to assume the station did well and could justify the price.

Overnight ratings in New Orleans, which is a metered market, showed that the game had a 52 rating among adults—meaning more than 50% of all households in the viewing area were watching. Because Baton Rouge is a diaried market, there is no way of knowing for sure how many households were watching in this area, but it was likely more than in the Crescent City.

BCS boost

Another media organ that got a boost from the BCS game was The Advocate’s Web site. The site received 3,000 hits on game day and more than 18,000 visits on the day after. That’s about 10 times more than it picks up on an average day, when it gets 350 or so hits.

The Web site might have even enjoyed more traffic had sports blogger Rich Loup been able to post during the big event, as bloggers did on dozens of other web sites including The Times-Picayune. Because The Advocate shares its site with corporate sibling WBRZ, an ABC affiliate, Loup was prohibited by NCAA rules from covering the event in real time.

“We could not blog during the telecast because it was a Fox telecast and we are an ABC affiliate,” explains Frieda Yarborough, online editor for The Advocate. “Newspapers that don’t have TV stations affiliated with them can do more sometimes.”

Granted, it’s unlikely the Web site would have had too many hits during actual play. After all, who would want to read about the game online when they could be watching it on live TV?

“I don’t think we were really at competitive disadvantage because anyone who wanted to watch the game likely had access to it and didn’t want to be reading about it,” Yarborough says.