Networks launch the biggest expansion in more than a decade
What bravado! Revolutions often start in quiet corners. But few try to rouse the masses when most of them are asleep. ABC and NBC did just that last week, however, in the first phase of the biggest growth of network TV news since the mid-1960s, when evening broadcasts grew from 15 minutes to a half-hour. ABC and NBC launched programs to serve news junkies as late as 3 a.m. and as early as 6 a.m. CBS will counter in October with news programs stretching from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m., thereby keeping the network on the air and available for live coverage of a crisis 24 hours a day, a genuine first. Says NBC News President Reuven Frank: "Networks must respond to the needs of people. If changing life-styles mean people are ready to watch at different times, we will do programs at different times."
Some 94% of U.S. TV sets, on average, are turned off between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. But if only 6% of the national audience is watching, that still translates to 5 million of the 81.5 million U.S. TV households. This eyeful is quite enough to interest network executives, especially when the additional news coverage can be produced at relatively modest cost, in part by taking advantage of the networks' vast, often underutilized staffs and the accumulation of footage that fails to win air time on the evening and morning newscasts.
More to the point, perhaps, the networks are increasingly aware of a long-range threat: the encroachments of Ted Turner's round-the-clock Cable News Network and especially his most recent effort, CNN2, the headline-news service, which has been sold not only to cable systems but also to dozens of the networks' own affiliate stations. Most network executives publicly downplay creeping "Turneritis." CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter discreetly calls CNN "one of a number of factors in our thinking," but NBC's Frank confesses: "It was all Turner. That is why we did it."
The new weekday entries are NBC's Overnight, airing from 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. (Fridays 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.); ABC's This Morning, 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.; and NBC's Early Today, a 6:30 a.m. curtain raiser to the 30-year-old Today show, which airs at 7 a.m. To come in October are an ABC hour of news and talk from midnight to 1 a.m., featuring Interviewer Phil Donahue, and a CBS marathon from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. that will lead into the network's Morning News from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. CBS was first to announce its move, but it will be the last into the fray. Claims a CBS executive: "We want to get it right the first time."