With little information and even less footage coming out of the Afghan war zone Sunday, the major television networks expanded their magazine programs or presented lengthy news updates but did not revert to the wall-to-wall coverage that proved so costly to them after the Sept. 11th attacks.
Indeed, NBC’s Dateline and CBS’s 60 Minutes appeared to be struggling to fill time. “There was a discussion [of] where the story was going, what pictures were available,” NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin, told today’s Los Angeles Times. “A decision was made that we could cover the story within our programming.” (Much of NBC’s coverage featured anchor Tom Brokaw discussing the events with correspondents and “consultants.” One “terrorism expert” interviewed by Brokaw speculated that bin Laden cadres in the U.S. are poised to carry out retaliatory attacks here “in the near future.”)
Fox decided to remain with its regular schedule, including an airing of the movie There’s Something About Mary.
With that said, however, most viewers tuned in to CBS for coverage of the U.S./British strikes in Afghanistan, giving the network a 9.4/15 average rating between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. (Reruns afterwards of other CBS shows that took the place of the canceled Emmy telecast fared poorly.) NBC’s Dateline averaged a 7.0/11 between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. and a 7.4/11 between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. ABC, with a news special, averaged a 6.7/10 for the two hours.
