March 21, 2003
ABC, Caught Unprepared, Apologizes to Its Affiliates
By BILL CARTER
n the opening night of the war, when every other television news organization enjoyed substantial ratings gains, ABC News had a disastrous evening.
The network issued a profuse apology yesterday to dozens of its affiliated stations for leaving them with a black screen and without news coverage at a crucial moment on Wednesday night — the beginning of their local newscasts. Earlier it had trailed its competitors in reporting the first attacks on Baghdad, and its main anchor, Peter Jennings, was out of place when the news broke.
ABC's apology blamed miscommunication and human error for abandoning the network's coverage at 11 p.m. in the East after telling their affiliates they would continue their coverage without interruption. They said they had neglected to tell the stations they had changed their minds between 10 and 11 p.m.
Many ABC stations found themselves with a black screen for at least several minutes, an egregious mistake in broadcasting because it drives viewers elsewhere. ABC stations were forced to rush commercials, promotions or ill-prepared newscasts onto the air. Several simply switched to coverage from CNN.
Earlier, ABC trailed its competitors by several minutes in reporting the attacks after it relied on what turned out to be inaccurate information that there were would be no military activity on Wednesday night. It was left without Mr. Jennings, who had left the newsroom for the evening and did not get back onto the air until almost a half hour after the first report of the attack appeared on NBC. Tom Brokaw on NBC and Dan Rather on CBS were available to anchor the news for their networks. Chris Wallace reported the news of the attacks in Mr. Jennings's absence.
ABC News had a similar problem last month, the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, when Mr. Jennings was delayed getting onto the air. After that incident, the ABC News president, David Westin, apologized to the network's affiliates and said it would not happen again.
The mistakes on Wednesday night apparently had an impact. ABC finished a distant last among the three broadcast networks with news divisions in initial ratings. National figures for viewers will not be available until today, but according to estimates from affiliated station ratings NBC was an easy winner with CBS far ahead of ABC for second place. ABC normally beats CBS News in coverage of special events.
Managers of ABC stations throughout the country were outraged by the blackout.
"They really dropped the ball," said Rick Keilty, the senior vice president of Belo Corporation, which owns four ABC affiliates.
"This came at a time of major news," Mr. Keilty added. "Our viewers were being invited to sample the other stations."
About the miscommunication with the affiliates, Jeffrey Schneider, the spokesman for ABC News, said: "It was a grievous error. Everybody understands we made a mistake."
On cable, all three news channels enjoyed enormous boosts in ratings. The Fox News Channel, which is now regularly the ratings leader, saw its average audience totals grow more than 500 percent. It hit a peak of 9.7 million viewers for the speech by President Bush and averaged about 5.7 million viewers for the hours between 9:30 and 3 a.m.
CNN attracted six million viewers during the speech and just over five million viewers from 9:30 to 3 a.m., an increase of about 675 percent. MSNBC had the biggest increase, with its audience growing more than 750 percent to about 2.3 million viewers for those hours. Its audience for the speech was 3.3 million viewers.
