10 o'clock news benefits from experiment.

In the past few years, the number of viewers watching the late local news has dropped. People are tuning into reruns of sitcoms, getting a sports roundup from ESPN, or watching a movie on HBO. Some have turned to surf the Internet. Still others have turned off the TV set and gone to bed.

The phenomenon has affected every late television newscast, not only in St. Louis, but all across the country. And it is having an impact in the newsroom. In Little Rock, one television station eliminated its 10 p.m. newscast. Here in St. Louis, KTVI (Channel 2), seeks out viewers by doing its 10 p.m. news at 9 p.m. In Chicago, WBBM-TV, the bottom-rated television station is taking a different approach.

"Carol Marin reports the 10 o'clock News" began in early February as the quarterly ratings sweep period was starting. Marin is the veteran Chicago news anchor who made headlines by resigning her longstanding position at NBC-owned WMAQ-TV in protest to the station adding talk show host Jerry Springer to the news as a commentator. Marin forged a deal with CBS-owned.

WBBM-TV to do investigative reports and to contribute to the CBS Network's "60 Minutes II" broadcast.

WBBM-TV has long underperformed the rest of the Chicago market. Its late newscast often finished well behind the market news leaders at 10 p.m., ABC-owned WLS-TV, and the aforementioned WMAQ-TV. It also usually attracted fewer viewers than syndicated programs on WGN-TV and WFLD-TV.

In an effort to regain viewers, WBBM-TV turned to Marin, a two-time winner of Peabody Awards, and gave her carte. blanche to craft a 10 p.m. program that focuses on the news. The program ignores or glosses over the "live" and "breaking news" cliche elements that fill the time in other newscasts, and concentrates on a handful of stories that are reported by a handful of veteran WBBM-TV reporters familiar to Chicago-area viewers. Stories are allowed to run as long as necessary and have focused on ongoing issues or scandals. It is more of a "Night-line"-style approach to the local news. WBBM-TV says the program will stay away from tie-ins to prime time entertainment programs and avoid stories that are only broadcast because of their "caught on tape" video.

The station hopes to attract viewers turned off by the headline hype that has overtaken the business, and who are looking for some meat to go with their dessert. The program did well on its first night, attracting twice the normal WBBM-TV audience and putting it in second place. Since then, viewership has dropped off, but it is still higher than the station was drawing before.

Obviously, it is too early to judge whether or not "Carol Marin reports the 10 O'clock News" will be successful. It takes time, a lot of it, to build a station's newscast.

Consultants get fired

The tide may be turning. In the past few months, several television station ownership groups have fired their news consultants.

Television news consultants advise station management on how to structure their newscasts and provide counsel on how to pair their anchors, or who should replace them when one departs.

The consultants also make "suggestions" on content and promotion.

On a good day, you could say the consultant made the station's newscast better. On most days, they just homogenized the product.

Station managers liked consultants because they provided a check on the station news director. Sometimes a consultant-inspired suggestion did work and ratings increased. When the ideas didn't work, it was the fault of the news directors who didn't "get it," or 'who failed to properly implement the suggestion.

One consultant with whom I was paired would come into town once a month and watch one day's worth of newscasts from each station in the market. Invariably, he loved another station's broadcasts. He found fault with everything done in our station, criticized the anchors, the reporters, the pacing of the broadcast, the opening and the theme music. Then he trashed the broadcasts of two' other stations as "out of touch" and "boring." He never understood that the "boring" stations were the market leaders, and the newscast he loved came from a station watched by fewer people than our station. This consultant's major contributions were suggesting ratings sweeps stories which were superficial, meaningless to the market, ignored by the viewers and criticized by newspaper reporters covering television. Oh, he also collected checks totaling well into six figures for his dozen days of work.

Consultants can be useful if they offer strategic advice and support for the people who deliver the product. They can help manage change. Too often, they just got in the way, creating a harmful barrier between the newsroom and the station manager.

Networks take control

A few months ago, this column explored the issue of how television networks wanted to change the nature of their relationship with their affiliated stations.

Since the networks went into business at the dawn of radio, they have paid local stations to carry their programming. NBC pays KSDK (Channel 5), CBS pays KMOV (Channel 4) and ABC pays KDNL (Channel 30) so that they will show the network programs (and the commercials they contain) at a specified time.

Over the years, the balance of power in these relationships has shifted back and forth. A few years ago, the Fox Network became very aggressive at signing up affiliates and local stations dominated. They were able to get the networks to increase their pay. Network compensation to a local station can run into millions of dollars. Stations in St. Louis receive between $5 and $10 million each year. In smaller markets, stations get less. In larger markets, they get more.

The compensation issues drive the networks crazy. As cable penetration increases and viewer choices proliferate, the networks find themselves paying more for fewer eyeballs. The networks also look enviously at the cable programmers, who have turned the equation around and get paid by cable companies to carry the programming. So in an effort to increase their profits, the networks have vowed to reduce or eliminate the amount of money they pay to local stations.

The networks have now fired the first shot. It isn't a warning shot. It could be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor for local television stations.

It happened in San Francisco, the nation's fifth-largest television market (St. Louis is 21st).

KRON-TV announced that later this year it would drop the NBC affiliation it has had since it signed on the air and will become an independent. NBC then announced that KNTV, 50 miles south in San Jose, would become NBC's home in the Bay Area.

For San Francisco area viewers the change means some inconvenience and re-education. For the television industry, the San Francisco changes are as seismic as the area's volatile earthquake faults. But there is more to the story than the bottom lines of a couple of media corporations.

The owners of the San Francisco Chronicle created KRON-TV. Through the years, the company expanded its broadcast holdings to include stations in Omaha and throughout Kansas. But as with many media families, some wanted to cash out their holdings. Late last year, the Chronicle was sold to The Hearst Corporation, publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. The Omaha and Kansas television stations were sold off, and KRON-TV was put on the market.

NBC really wanted to own this television station, and offered the Chronicle's DeYoung family more than $800 million. It wasn't enough. NBC was out-bid by Young Broadcasting, a company which owns a number of television stations in the middle of the country and KCAL-TV, a non-affiliated station in Los Angeles.

Because network affiliation contracts contain a rarely used clause which allows the pact to be renegotiated at the time the television station is sold, NBC lay down an ultimatum. . It offered Young Broadcasting the opportunity to keep the network if it paid NBC upwards of $20 million per year, rebranded the station from KRON4 to NBC4, increased the amount of promotion of network shows during local broadcasts, and prohibited any preemptions of the prime time schedule. Quite a change from the current arrangement where NBC paid KRONTV well over $10 million per year in compensation.

Young Broadcasting--already spending close to a billion dollars to buy the television station--didn't like the terms and told NBC to take a hike. For several days, NBC faced the prospect of not having an outlet for its programming in the fifth largest television market in the country. That is an audience difference that can be detrimental to the network's ratings, which could lead to lower advertising rates and to a significant subtraction from NBC's profitability.

The San Francisco-Bay area has many television stations. KTVU in Oakland just renewed its long-term affiliation with FOX. KPIX-TV is owned by CBS and KGO-TV is owned by ABC. There are many UHF channels, populated by Asian and Latino broadcasters, and affiliates for' the newer WB and UPN networks. So, NBC didn't really have a place to turn to.

Enter KNTV in San Jose., 50 miles south of San Francisco, KNTV has been a long-time ABC affiliate, filling in network programming down into Central California. But the station has been somewhat of a thorn in the side of the network-owned KGO-TV in San Francisco. Later this year, KNTV was to drop the ABC affiliation in return for a sizeable cash payment. Like the big stations in San Francisco, KNTV is VHF, so it is easy to tune in. But because its transmitter is far south of the heart of the market, the signal is weak in parts of San Francisco and Oakland where the bulk of the viewers is. And the station is not well represented on area cable systems, because of the conflict with KGO.

In early February, NBC announced that it had reached a deal with KNTV to become the new NBC affiliate. Under the 10-year deal, KNTV will pay NBC more than $30 million per year to receive NBC's programming. Wow!

KNTV will begin the regulatory process to upgrade its signal and NBC has arranged with AT&T, the Bay Area's predominant cable company, to put KNTV on its systems. NBC also renewed the network affiliation contracts of three other television stations owned by the company, which owns KNTV.

You could note that there were special circumstances with KRON, but NBC has fired the first shot and it is a big one. This "reverse compensation" package creates a precedent that could change the way we watch television--not only in San Francisco, but here in St. Louis as well.

Armed with the San Francisco agreement, NBC could play hardball with Gannett, the owner of KSDK. In the now broken off discussions for Sinclair to sell KDNL to Emmis, the ABC network affiliation contract was part of the discussion and part of the problem.

For viewers, it could mean that the networks could eventually move their programs away from the local stations and offer them direct to cable systems. If you don't have cable, you don't see shows like ER or Dateline or West Wing.

For local television stations, the loss of a network affiliation can be devastating. A large chunk of revenue disappears. Replacement programming costs skyrocket, and viewers tune out.

Faced with smaller audiences and lower revenues stations could cut costs, reducing "their commitment to news--cutting people and programs.

The ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times" rings true. These are certainly interesting times.

David Cohen is a former ABC news producer and bureau chief who currently is a consultant to business on the television industry.