Ratings war, Helena style: Local TV stations beef up their news coverage, battle to gain viewers

Ratings war, Helena style Local TV stations beef up their news coverage, battle to gain viewers A B/ARTOOTH NBC News For You Dylan Brown Independent Record Beartooth NBC Meteorologist Ellen Bacca, left, and News Director Melissa Jensen interact at the start of their hour long newscast Wednesday afternoon. There's a battle under way for TV viewers in the Helena area, as three stations with operations in the city add reporters, expand newscasts and fight for viewership bragging rights. The chief protagonist in the figurative fight is KXLH, the CBS affiliate. Aided by a strong primetime program lineup and a significant investment in its Helena news operation, the upstart recently claimed the top spot in the latest Nielsen ratings in the 10 p.m. slot. After a number of years of beaming a "simulcast" news broadcast from Great Falls into Helena, KXLH about 18 months ago ramped up its local presence by hiring several reporters and adding other staffers in the capital. Today, KXLH has eight employees in Helena, including four reporters. "We looked at Helena and said this is an important market and it deserves a local newscast all its own," said Bill Evans, the general manager for KXLH and Great Falls- -based KRTV. Based on Nielsen numbers supplied by Evans, KXLH's 10 p.m. newscast was viewed by about 24 percent of the households surveyed in the Helena TV market in the February ratings period. That number pushed Dylan Brown, Independent Record interviews a firefighter Dec. 13, 2011, after an money to compensate viewers for filling out the logs. While the Nielsen numbers give KXLH bragging rights and are often used as a key component in advertising sales pitches, Kathy Carrick, general manager at KTVH, says they could represent a onetime blip. "We've always been the No. 1 newscast in the market," Carrick said last week. "This is the first diary that shows something different. We expect those ratings to be reversed in the next ratings period." Danette Sukut, the general manager of KHBB and KFBB in Great Falls, which also broadcasts FOX programming in Helena, said her station doesn't subscribe to the Nielsen rating service and pooh t the importance or relevance of the numbers. "We are not very confident in the methodology in which the data is gathered," Sukut said, noting the numbers are not based on the number of households watching TV in a time slot but on results from the limited number of diaries. Nielsen at times asks that only viewers in a targeted demographic group fill out the diaries, which could skew the results significantly. "I think it is truly a flawed methodology," she said, noting that in larger markets, ratings based on results compiled from set -top boxes provide more accurate viewing information. While KTVH buys the Nielsen ratings and uses them in its operation, Carrick says the fact that only 200 diaries are sent to area viewers results in limited information. "It's kind of an archaic way of doing ratings," she said. Focus on news and money KXLH has made a significant investment in its eight -person Helena staff, recently adding its fourth reporter in the city. It has recently added a second anchor More RATINGS, page 3E generating get recently at oil By BUTCH LARCOMBE Independent Record KXLH reporter Marnee Banks apartment caught fire. KXLH past KTVH, the NBC affiliate and the longtime local ratings leader, in that time slot. KTVH's share of the viewers in that slot was between 17 and 18 percent, while KHBB, the ABC affiliate had viewers in about 4 percent of the households, a share that appears to have changed little in recent months. The Nielsen numbers are based on "diaries" mailed to 200 households in the Helena area. Recipients are asked to fill out what programs they watched in particular time slots and mail the diary back to Nielsen. Along with the diaries, Nielsen sends a small amount of

The Independent-Record

Ratings war, Helena style: Local TV stations beef up their news coverage, battle to gain viewers

Ratings war, Helena style: Local TV stations beef up their news coverage, battle to gain viewers

The Independent-Record