CBS AFFILIATES MULL, MOURN ‘MORNING’ SHOW

NEW YORK —  The video personals ads are gone. Daisy the dog, who made her TV debut on the show, isn’t around much anymore. But the live audience still is there, applauding even station breaks. Good audience.

Bad ratings, though. And that is why CBS’ 4-month-old “The Morning Program” is expected to be a top grumble of station executives at the annual CBS affiliates’ convention opening today in Los Angeles.

“I think it will be high on the agenda,” said Paul Raymon, an affiliate board member whose station, WAGA-TV in Atlanta, doesn’t carry the show, opting instead for local news and the syndicated “Hour Magazine.”

“Affiliates are not very happy with what has happened so far,” he said, although he noted that only a few of CBS’ 200-plus stations--notably his and one in New Orleans--don’t carry the show.

Still, he said, “the network is very concerned that because of the poor ratings and the continued poor press that the program gets, that this might encourage some defections.”

Foaled on Jan. 12 with Mariette Hartley and Rolland Smith as hosts, “The Morning Program” aims at a younger, upscale audience, particularly women, and, according to CBS officials who urge patience, it’s starting to get that.

Offering only two brief newscasts, “The Morning Program” was created after various lighten-the-format changes in recent years failed to bring Nielsen joy to the old two-hour version of the “CBS Morning News.”

Airing from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. against NBC’s top-rated “Today” show and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’ new effort offers entertainment reports, comedy, weather-with-comedy, health and product news, and occasional five-part discussions of various matters.

The first five-parter, in March, featured “Platoon” writer-director Oliver Stone and three veterans with whom he served in Vietnam. Last week’s effort was “Throwaway Wives.” This week’s edition features Bette Davis.

Although the show’s general tone is so cheery that it makes Dale Carnegie seem like Capt. Grouch by comparison, the ratings have have been somewhat to the left of whoopee.

Thanks to advance publicity, the show opened with a 3.1 rating. Not bad, even though many critics called the program awful, terrible, wretched and even no good. The show has failed to reach those Nielsen heights again.

Last month, it hit its lowest mark--a 2.1 rating and a 10% share of audience. According to the latest returns, for the week ending May 8, it posted a 2.6 rating and 13% share of audience. Each rating point represents 874,000 homes.

In that week, “Today” had a 4.8 rating and a 24% audience share, while “Good Morning America” had a 4.3 and a 21% share.

Still, there are signs that “The Morning Program” is getting that new, upscale audience so desired by advertisers, according to Bob Shanks, executive producer and creator of the show.

Among other things, he said, the show has gotten “an 89% increase in women, 18 to 49, and the sales picture is very bright.”

(Sure, those demographics touted by CBS are nice, said Raymon, but when the ratings stay as low as they have, “it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference.”)

Shanks, who in 1975 helped develop what became ABC’s “Good Morning America,” is scheduled to address the CBS affiliates convention Wednesday, when the station executives hear presentations on news, sports and entertainment.

Asked for a preview of his oration, Shanks said he’ll tell them that when “Good Morning America” was getting under way, “the (ratings) number was lower” its first year than that currently suffered by “The Morning Program.”

“These are slow builds,” Shanks said, referring to new morning programs. “I think Black Rock (the nickname for CBS’ corporate headquarters building) understands this very clearly. I hope the affiliates will.”

The affiliates are restless, said Joe Carriere, immediate past president of the CBS affiliates board. He said that he has heard some station executives express “some thought of jumping out”--dropping the show.

But he, for one, hasn’t given up on “The Morning Program” yet.

“I think it needs a bit more time,” said Carriere, vice president and general manager of KBIM-TV in Roswell, N. M.

And, he said, it helps that CBS-TV President Thomas Leahy has told affiliates that the network was looking at the show “as a long-range thing, and his advice to us . . . has been ‘Hold on to it, it needs a little time to grow.’ ”

Raymon, who last fall said that he was taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the show, has waited and seen since its January debut. No sale. “We are not moved towards clearance,” he said.

However, the Atlanta TV executive, whose station serves the nation’s 12th-largest television market, hasn’t forever shut the door on the show:

“We’ve said all along we were going to do this (WAGA’s own morning-show package) on a temporary basis in hopes the new CBS program, whatever it was going to be, would work out. And the moment it began to show some signs of life, some element of growth, we had every intention of rejoining the network.

“And that still is the case. We keep looking for that flickering light. We haven’t seen it yet. But as soon as we do, we are ready, willing and able . . . to jump right back on the bandwagon, and we would be delighted to do so.”