WFTV's Watch and Win giveaway in 2000

WFTV is reaching into its past to try to secure a ratings win in the November sweep.

Today and tomorrow — the last days of the sweep — Channel 9 is offering $5,000 to lucky morning news viewers. The reason?

“WFTV is the longtime leader in the 6 a.m. time slot and will win most news time slots in the November ratings period,” Orlando Sentinel TV Guy Hal Boedeker reports.  ”But WESH has been growing in the morning and enjoys a slight lead at 6 a.m. in the 25-to-54 age group measured through Friday. WESH has a 2.14 rating to WFTV’s 2.03. The 25-to-54 category is most important to news advertisers.”

WFTV wants to keep the morning news crown, so it’s putting up the cash to try to turn the ratings race in its favor. To longtime Orlando TV viewers, this should sound familiar.

It’s the same stunt WFTV has used before — to hold off WESH.

In February 2000, WFTV’s Eyewitness News trailed WESH’s “NewsChannel 2″ newscast at 11 p.m. — until putting up a $5,000 “Watch and Win” promotion. Money talks.

“We were in first place at 11 until the last week, when Channel 9 did an instant cash giveaway and beat us,” then-WESH GM Bill Bauman said. “I would say that I am disappointed. I think we have a good news product and I’m proud of it.”

And if you have to pay people to watch your news, just how good is it?

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WFTV-Channel 9′s Eyewitness News has been so dominate for so long, it’s news whenever it doesn’t finish No. 1 in a time period.

And that happened, sorta. During October, WESH 2′s Sunrise morning news — which is simulcast on sister station WKCF-CW18 — had more combined viewers in the 25-54 demo than WFTV’s Eyewitness News Daybreak. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the WESH-WKCF combo had 32,100 households from 6 to 7 a.m. while WFTV had 31,800.

If you break it down, WESH had 26,700 homes and WKCF had 5,400 — so head-to-head, WFTV still comes out on top. But that may be it when it comes to good news for WFTV.

Almost all of the  area newscasts lost viewers in the demo year-over-year, but Channel 9  saw the most significant drop.

At 6 p.m., WFTV lost 13,400 viewers from 2009. At 5 p.m., it lost 14,900 from last year — while WESH actually grew by 5,000.

WFTV still dominates in all news periods when counting total viewers. Still, the question has to be asked:  Could the October numbers  protend a change in the longtime viewing patterns of Central Florida news watchers? Perhaps we’ll see when all the numbers are counted after  the November sweep, which began last week.

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