KSHB is No. 4 with a bullet

It's not often that a station rated fourth in the market pops the cork following yet another fourth-place finish. But that's just what they did Thursday at KSHB, Channel 41, after its most competitive ratings period since the station became an NBC affiliate five years ago. KSHB's 10 p.m. news finished with a 5.7 rating and an 11 share for the four-week "sweep" that ended Wednesday, just one share point behind WDAF, Channel 4. Each rating point represents 8,206 local households, while each share point represents 1 percent of people watching TV at that hour. Channel 41 was the only station to gain viewers at 10 p.m. compared with last November (up 27 percent) and made up nearly all of a six-share-point deficit to WDAF in 12 months. It's not hard to figure out what, or rather who, made the difference: new KSHB chief meteorologist Gary Lezak. For years 41 has seen its ratings drop off steeply between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., as viewers turned elsewhere for weather and sports. But since the heavily promoted arrival of Lezak from Channel 4, more viewers have been staying put. Channel 41 averaged a 9 share between 10:15 and 10:30, only slightly lower than its 10 share between 10 and 10:15. (Lezak was actually on air barely half the month, in between the chemotherapy treatments for cancer that - as viewers saw - caused all of his hair to fall out.) The way KSHB news director Laura Clark sees it, the November ratings not only vindicate 41's hiring of Lezak but her belief that the newscast was a well-kept secret waiting to leak out. "We've had a strong news product all along; the problem is, so do Channel 9 and Channel 5 and Channel 4," Clark said. "Well, if they've all got strong products, there's no reason for viewers to change the channel. Gary gave them that reason." The newscasts of KMBC, Channel 9, won every time period except for 6 p.m., when KCTV, Channel 5, averaged a 10.2 rating/19 share to KMBC's 10.0/18. However, Channel 9 appears helpless to stop the erosion of viewers at 10 p.m. Since November 1996, when its late news averaged an 18.0 rating/30 share, KMBC has lost nearly a third of its audience. The 10 p.m. averaged a 12.9 rating/22 share in November. Its lead over KCTV is down to three share points. Overall fewer Kansas City viewers are watching the news at 10 - 62 percent of TV sets, compared with 67 percent a year ago. ABC won the national November sweeps, the first time it has done so in five years. But it did so on the shoulders of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," a program that aired in the early evening and didn't give much of a boost to its affiliates' late news. Another sign of how well Channel 41 did: NBC's lead-out at 10 was not nearly as strong as in May 1998, when "Seinfeld" was on. Yet more people stuck around for KSHB's newscast last month than in May 1998. "It's been a really difficult year for us," said Clark, who has presided over three rounds of layoffs in that time. "But we're fortunate to have a whole building full of people who are terrific at what they do." To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or go to TV Barn at www.tvbarn.com