KABC Tops Ratings With Quake Coverage

Los Angeles-area residents who turned to KABC to watch the World Series Tuesday night stuck with the local ABC affiliate for news coverage of the San Francisco earthquake. But the other two local network affiliates also scored high ratings, as viewers stayed glued to their sets.

KABC scored a 24.5 rating between 5 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., more than doubling the 10.5 rating for KCBS and the 11.5 garnered by KNBC. Each A.C. Nielsen rating point in the Los Angeles area represents 49,315 households.

KABC scored its highest numbers at 6 p.m. with a 31.3 rating and a 47 share of the TV audience. The station continued pulling ratings of 26 or more until 8:45 p.m., when viewing started to dip slightly.

The Arbitron ratings service reported that CNN had a 2.4 rating in Los Angeles from 5 p.m to 8 p.m. The previous Tuesday CNN registered only a 0.3 rating for the same time period. An Arbitron point represents 49,394 households in Los Angeles.