Salt Lake Station Starts Book off with Suicide show
KSL in Salt Lake City kicked off the May sweeps on Thursday night in a most unusual way.
After a few minutes of headlines, weather and sports, the station essentially abandoned its late newscast in favor of a commercial-free public service campaign to prevent suicide.
A laudable effort, to be sure. One worthy of praise and thanks. But it turned out to be a ratings stinker.
In terms of the ratings, KSL's 10 p.m. newscast was not competitive with local ratings leader KUTV. Channel 2 drew an 11.2 rating/23 share for its late newscast, more than doubling Channel 5's 5.5/11.
KSTU-Ch. 13 matched that 5.5./11 at 9 p.m.; KTVX-Ch. 4 trailed with a 3.6/8 at 10 p.m.