The "no one cares about" July book is here, but some stations are just now getting their May book numbers.  

KATV-TV, Channel 7, was ahead of its two Little Rock competitors in most time slots for May’s Nielsen household ratings of local newscasts.

The data, from Nielsen Media Research of New York, showed major year-over-year gains and losses in the shares of the 5 a.m. time slot from all three stations. KTHV-TV, Channel 11, showed a gain of 8.1 percentage points in shares with KATV falling by just short of 10 percentage points. KARK-TV, Channel 4, gained 3.3 percent of the share in that time slot but still remained 0.5 points below KATV.

“We’re looking at that,” said Nick Genty, KATV’s news director. “If you look hard at it, you’ll see something a little bit strange about how our numbers all of a sudden just jump up at 6 a.m.”

Genty said the station has had great success in its 10 p.m. news.

In the slots with multiple stations competing, KATV remained on top. Despite this, KTHV lauded the rating period for successes in other demographics.

“Eyeballs are what matter, so this was a great book for KTHV and shows up-ticks everywhere except in [prime time] where CBS’ shows ended their season halfway through the sweeps,” said David Craft, KTHV’s vice president of marketing and promotions.

KARK and jointly managed KLRT-TV, Channel 16, do not subscribe to the ratings service, so their staffs cannot comment on them. Each Nielsen household rating point represents 1 percent of 561,760 households in the market across 36 Arkansas counties. Each household share point represents 1 percent of the number of homes with TVs tuned into a station at a given time.

Arkansas Business