‘USA Today on TV’ at Ratings Crossroads

NEW YORK —  The fate of the new, still-struggling “USA Today on TV” may depend on how it did in the February ratings sweeps that ended Wednesday, although its demise doesn’t seem imminent.

That was the word Wednesday from Steve Friedman, creator and the first executive producer of the syndicated news series that was revamped and retitled in mid-season after its much-criticized start last September.

What will happen now, Friedman said, is that the stations carrying the half-hour program will study the Feb. 2-March 1 ratings for the show and make their decisions about whether to stick with it.

Those ratings, from the nation’s 200-plus TV markets, will be available in about two weeks, an A.C. Nielsen Co. spokeswoman here said.

Friedman said that 150 stations--six fewer than when it began--now air the program, including KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles, which picked it up when KCBS-TV Channel 2 dropped it.

He was asked if there’s a possibility of the show folding before the end of the two-year period that most stations, according to a spokesman for the program, have contracts to carry it.

“There’s always that possibility,” he replied, although he emphasized that “it doesn’t appear likely. But who knows?”

Friedman is president of the East Coast division of GTG Entertainment, a production company owned by former NBC board chairman Grant Tinker and Gannett, Inc., the parent company of the USA Today newspaper.

The program spent $40 million gearing up. It began as “USA Today: The Television Show” and had four anchors. Now it has a new name, a slower pace and a two-anchor format.

“We think the program has made progress,” said Friedman, who last fall turned over the running of the show to veteran newsman James Bellows. “It’s doing better, and if we could get a shot in New York”--the nation’s largest TV market--”that would be the shot that would probably determine how we do.”

He meant a shot in the early evening hours for which the show was designed. WCBS-TV here had been running it at 1 a.m., then axed it. Rival WNBC-TV picked up it, and on Monday began airing it--but at 5: 30 a.m.

Friedman is hoping the NBC-owned station axes the syndicated “Inside Edition” that it now airs at 7:30 p.m., and substitutes his company’s show in that time slot. However, he noted, “it’s their call, not ours.”