Amber Vacation Club

TV ratings for a time no one's watching

Ah July, we hardly knew ya.

It's a month when nothing is on television, and no one is watching because everyone is on vacation or outdoors.

And yet July is a bona fide ratings sweeps month, even though the results are meaningless except to those keeping score for their fantasy league. But since Nielsen doggedly keeps track of them, report them I will.

WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) won the 10 p.m. news race with a 9.0 rating, compared with a 7.3 for WISN-TV (Channel 12). WITI-TV (Channel 6) had a 5.9, and WDJT-TV (Channel 58) had a 3.9.

WTMJ-TV'S ratings are up 0.1 point from July 2010; WISN-TV's are down 0.8 of a point for the same period.

At 9 p.m., the 5.6 rating for WITI's newscast beat prime-time programming on all other stations.

And WISN-TV again won sign-on to signoff, even though no one actually signs off anymore.

This is WTMJ-TV's third consecutive 10 p.m. win, and it comes at an interesting time:

 After a string of reporter defections, WTMJ-TV has re-signed its 10 p.m. team of Mike Jacobs and Carole Meekins to a new contract, the length of which was unreported. The 10 p.m. win surely speaks to viewers' comfort and familiarity with the anchor team: Jacobs joined the station in 1977, Meekins in 1991. They have been co-anchors for five years.

WTMJ-TV and the Journal Sentinel are owned by Journal Communications.

 WISN-TV, meanwhile, is hunting for a new 10 p.m. co-anchor to sit next to Kathy Mykleby now that Toya Washington has gone part time. They've got all summer to do so and, with all that is at stake, they will surely take a nice hard swing at the ball.

 Despite losing the great and powerful Oprah as a lead-in, WISN-TV's 5 p.m. news was still first in July by exactly 1 percentage point ."The Oprah Winfrey Show," however, earned an anemic 3.1 and was second-ranked behind news on WTMJ-TV at 4 p.m. "Oprah" earned a handsome 7.4 rating in the May ratings sweeps, and the finale earned a whopping 15.2. The show is now in reruns forever. The question is how "Oprah" replacement "Dr. Oz" will affect the station's 5 p.m. newscast.

WISN-TV's 6 p.m. newscast beat all comers handily in the latest ratings.

The next significant dates on the television calendar are the start of the new fall TV season in September, and the next ratings period survey in late October and November. So don't write me to ask when you don't see your favorite local TV news, sports or weather person on the air. Simply assume that they are burning off vacation and accumulated time off.

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