By STEVE MARINUCCI, Mercury News Staff Writer
Published Friday, January 31, 1986, San Jose (CA) Mercury News
THE TV ratings for Tuesday's coverage of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster were, as expected, extremely high, but not nearly of Super Bowl caliber.
In the Bay Area, most stations were tuned to KGO (Ch. 7), according to overnight Nielsen ratings. KPIX (Ch. 5) and KRON (Ch. 4) battled for second place during the period from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. However, for one two-hour period (12:45 to 2:45 p.m.), KPIX took the top spot from KGO. At any given time, more than 163,000 homes were tuned to KGO, 159,000 to KPIX and 144,000 to KRON, according to the Nielsens.
Overnight ratings were not available for San Jose's ABC affiliate, KNTV (Ch. 11), because the Salinas-Monterey market, of which KNTV is a part, is not one of the areas used in the national Nielsen figures.
Pat Macholl, KRON's research director, estimates that about two-thirds of Tuesday's daytime audience was watching shuttle coverage on one of the San Francisco network affiliates. The number of viewers took a 50 percent jump over viewing figures for the previous Tuesday, she said.
Compared to the Super Bowl, which garnered a 45 rating (the percentage of the total potential TV audience in the Bay Area watching) and a 77 share (the percentage of people watching TV who were tuned to that particular station), the local ratings and shares for the shuttle coverage in the Bay Area reached a 21 rating and a 66 share.
KGO also garnered the highest audience for its Tuesday night prime-time specials (on from 10 to 11 p.m). The station scored a 12.3 rating and a 24 share, followed by KPIX's 8.4 and 16 and KRON's 8.1 and 16.
On a national level, ratings based on 12-city overnight figures gave ABC (anchored by Peter Jennings) the top spot, followed by NBC with Tom Brokaw and CBS with Dan Rather. According to an industry analyst, ABC's higher ratings can be attributed to the network's successful 9 p.m. "Moonlighting" series, which preceded the news special on the shuttle disaster.
