This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Viewership for late local news in the Salt Lake TV market hardly changed at all from November 2014 to November 2015.
The aggregate rating for the three 10 p.m. and one 9 p.m. newscasts was 21.6 rating points during the November 2014 sweeps; it was 21.7 rating points in November 2015. That's a negligible difference of 0.46 percent.
That's good news for local TV news, which has been in decline for years. Holding steady is a win.
But there were still winners and losers.
• KUTV-Ch. 2 was the biggest winner, finishing first (again) and increasing its late-news rating — along with winning the local news competition in every other half-hour of the day but one.
• KSL-Ch. 5 was also a winner. Its 10 p.m. newscast was up November-to-November, and it won the only half-hour news competition KUTV didn't win — the 6 p.m. newscast — by 0.3 rating points.
• KSTU-Ch. 13, which had momentum in recent sweeps, took a hit. Not only was its 9 p.m. newscast down November to November, but so were most of its other local news shows.
• KTVX-Ch. 4 continues to struggle. Its 10 p.m. newscast was off by half a rating point November-to-November, but its audience is small, so that turns into a significant percentage.
Here are the Sunday-Saturday household numbers for the four late local newscasts (10 p.m. for Channels 2, 4 and 5; 9 p.m. for Ch. 13), along with the approximate number of households those numbers represent:
KUTV-Ch. 2 • 8.6 rating, 76,100 homes (up 10 percent vs. November 2014)
KSL-Ch. 5 • 6.6 rating, 58,400 homes (up 8 percent)
KSTU-Ch. 13 • 4.2 rating, 37,200 homes (down 19 percent)
KTVX-Ch. 4 • 2.2 rating, 19.500 homes (down 19 percent)
Keep in mind, these are live plus same-day numbers — both households where someone watched the newscasts live and those where someone watched them on DVR within a day. (There isn't a lot of viewing of DVR'd newscasts after that.)
And these are only household numbers; they don't include the demographic information that stations will actually use to sell advertising. Those numbers won't be in for a few weeks.
In the past, KSTU-Ch. 13 has done extremely well in the demos. But even taking that into account, it will be tough for the local Fox affiliate to translate its November 2015 household number into a demographic win.
What happened? While there's certainly no single (or easy) answer, you can't help but note that Fox's prime time didn't help — it finished fourth locally. CBS averaged a 5.8 rating in prime time; NBC averaged a 4.9 rating; ABC averaged a 3.5 rating; Fox averaged a 3.2 rating.
And it could have been worse. Fox's numbers got a bit of a boost from the World Series — Game 5 was the single most-watched prime-time program in Utah during the November 2015 sweeps.
Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune . Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.