Ratings for key Charlotte newscasts

CHARLOTTE NEWSCASTS

Estimated total viewers reached by key weekday newscasts during the November sweeps and percentage change from last November as measured by Nielsen.

6 A.M.
WSOC	84,200	-4%
WBTV	47,700	+5%
WCNC	20,700	-27%
WCCB	11,600	+25%
WJZY	700	*
NOON
WBTV	72,000	-16%
WSOC	69,000	+2%
WCNC	15,000	+8%
6 P.M.
WSOC	135,000	+2%
WBTV	102,500	+14%
WCNC	44,400	-16%
WJZY	3,200	*
NETWORK NEWCASTS
ABC	136,300	+2%
CBS	105,400	+20%
NBC	78,300	-5%
10 P.M.
WAXN	46,900	+11%
WCCB	22,100	+3%
WJZY	7,800	-68%
11 P.M.
WSOC	82,800	-20%
WBTV	72,700	+9%
WCNC	32,500	+16%

*No comparisons available.

Mark Washburn's analysis

November’s sweeps saw the entry of Fox affiliate WJZY (Channel 46) into the early morning and the 6 p.m. news races for the first time and showed how much work is left to do to become competitive for the news operation, which has been without a full-time news director since September when Geoff Roth returned to Fox’s Houston station.

Fox Charlotte's morning show, launched in August and the most polished of its daily newscasts, averaged fewer than 1,000 viewers at 6 a.m. Some infomercials get better numbers. Its 6 p.m. newscast, launched in July, attracts 1 percent of the region’s news audience watching the four local news channels at that hour. It has lost half the audience it had at 6 p.m. when it ran reruns of “Two-and-a-Half Men,” though that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been profitable – political advertisers in the pre-election cycle were buying commercials avidly in local newscasts regardless of the ratings. 

More concerning to Fox is that the Time Warner Cable News Channel attracts more viewers by nearly a third in the hours it goes head-to-head with WJZY newscasts, and Time Warner’s penetration in the city is only about 50 percent of households and does not go to many of the 22 counties that WJZY’s broadcast signal reaches. 

WJZY has been tinkering with its formula. It de-emphasized the anchor role at first, but has now teamed Anthony Flores with Barbara Pinson. It once ignored routine crime, a prime staple of Charlotte TV news, and now features it. On its 10 p.m. broadcast on Nov. 6, for example, all but two stories in the first 12 minutes were crime or public-safety related (including one that was billed as a “car-jacking gone wrong”).

WBTV crested 100,000 in average viewers in its 6 p.m. newscast in November, the first time I can ever remember it getting that many without days of severe weather driving ratings.


In the 25-54 age demographic that advertisers aim for, WSOC (Channel 9) and sister station WAXN (Channel 64) won all the key newscasts except for noon, when WBTV was No. 1.