Duopolies so far failing to lift ratings. (Media & Technology).

The owners of L.A.'s television duopolies have taken different approaches in their attempts to build distinct identities for their stations, but the moves have not resulted in uniformly better ratings.

A comparison of May's Nielsen ratings with the year-earlier period, including the highly competitive sweeps period, shows that Viacom Inc.'s CBS, General Electric Co.'s NBC and News Corp.'s Fox Television all continued to lose market share due to increasing fragmentation of the television market.

Most households now have access to nearly 100 channels, and in 2002 cable viewing surpassed that of the top five broadcast networks for the first time.

To combat that fragmentation and retain viewership, station owners are doing their best to carve out segments of the local audience.

"Branding is key. It's what all the stations want so they have audience recall," said Cathleen Campe, vice president and director of broadcast at advertising agency Rubin Postaer & Associates Inc. "It used to be you had three stations, then seven. Now you have a million choices, so you have to make an impact."

That competition can result in one of a company's local stations doing well while the other flounders.

At Fox's duopoly, for example, the network-branded KTTV (Channel 11), with its heavy concentration of reality programming, held its own in the key 18-49 demographic group, drawing a cumulative 1.9 rating and 10 percent share of the average audience, the same as in the previous year, according to Nielsen.

The other Fox station, UPN-branded KCOP (Channel 13), targets younger viewers and dropped from a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic to 0.6. (Each rating point represents 874,000 households. Audience share is the percentage of total viewers watching a station at a particular time.)

Fox officials did not respond to interview requests.

The news was worse at NBC, which owns three Los Angeles stations: KNBC (Channel 4) and Telemundo stations KVEA (Channel 52) and KWHY (Channel 22).

While KNBC held its lead in the cumulative 18-49 age group with a 2.3 rating in the May period, the station's average audience share dipped by a third from the like year-earlier period. Meantime, Spanish-language KVEA averaged a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 age group, down from a 0.9 rating a year earlier. KVEA's audience share dipped 40 percent, according to Nielsen.

Different philosophies

Unlike the Fox and Viacom duopolies, NBC, broadcasting in Spanish and English, doesn't face the same identity challenge. Yet, the company has made a point of not trying to turn KVEA "into NBC in Espanol," Paula Madison, KNBC's president and general manager, told the Business Journal earlier this year.

"Most of the efficiencies have come in the areas of business and technology," said Jennifer Cabalquinto, vice president of finance for the three stations. "My job is an example. If you were operating three or two separate stations, you'd have a controller for each station. I'm responsible for all three."

Of all the local duopolies, Viacom's KCBS (Channel 2) and KCAL (Channel 9) have demonstrated the most integration on air, mixing news operations and generally trying to make the most of its shared resources.

"Our goal is to brand our stations distinctly. We share our resources, when it makes sense," said Marshall Hites, director of creative services, advertising and marketing for KCBS and KCAL.

A key component of that branding is in the different types of news programs shown on the two stations. While KCBS has stuck to the traditional 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. half-hour newscasts, KCAL's news programs ran for an hour at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. That way, KCAL does not compete directly for news viewers with KCBS, and it aims to pick up those viewers when other stations are showing different fare.

"Viacom is doing a lot more cross-promotional advertising. You even see ads for a show that's running on the other station," said Sue Johenning, executive vice president and director of local broadcast for ad firm Initiative.

Despite those efforts, the Viacom stations fared no better than their competitors in the May-to-May comparison among adults 18-49. According to Nielsen, KCBS dipped to a 0.8 cumulative rating in May, vs. 0.9 the previous year. KCAL dipped all the way to a 0.6 from a 0.9 a year ago, losing 40 percent of its average audience during that period.

Fox, on the other hand, appears to believe that each station must stand on its own. So, despite combining its sales operations under a single umbrella, Fox has resisted cross promoting shows between KTTV and KCOP. That extends to the Fox-owned Los Angeles Dodgers, whose games are aired on KCOP and Fox's two local cable sports stations, Fox Sports Net and Fox Sports Net 2.

Campe pointed out that it's too early to tell which strategy makes the most sense.

"Ratings don't change that quickly, there may be a long-term effect," she said. "It doesn't mean that they are not being successful with the changes they are making even though you don't see it in the ratings."