Switching Channels, Big Time, in Denver   

Imagine this scenario, TV fans: A Machiavellian realtor sells Jerry Seinfeld's house to Diane Sawyer, Sawyer's house to Cybil Shepherd and Shepherd's house to Seinfeld. There's only one condition: They all move simultaneously. At midnight. So they do. When dawn breaks, the stars arise and go to meet their new neighbors, instantly sending property values up.

Or, depending on tastes, down.

The metaphor is perhaps a stretch, but it aptly illustrates the wild uncertainties that faced the Denver television market when engineers at the ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates shuffled those networks around on the dial – at midnight on September 10. The stations and their news staffs didn't move, but each inherited a new network partner.

It was a move oiled by unprecedented cooperation between network rivals, in a business notorious for cutthroat competition. But the unlikely coalition was involuntary – forced by high-stakes network machinations – and the Big Switch was laden with suspense.

Denver TV executives knew the network moves wouldn't just assign new zip codes to viewers' favorite prime time shows. The resulting audience surges from one channel to another also had the potential to either sink or save some of the local news programs that provide stations with critical revenue.

The three-way switch resulted from a dizzying series of nationwide deals and consequences. The networks would move to their new Denver channels at the same time – a tame form of musical chairs with seating for all. But who would win or lose when the music stopped? Would viewers, following their favorite soaps or comedies, desert their usual local news sources in a market that had been essentially unchanged for more than 40 years?

Two Denver news directors believed their new network neighbors would help ratings. "Tom Brokaw is quite popular in the Rocky Mountains," KUSA's Dave Lougee said before his station shifted from ABC to Brokaw's NBC. KMGH's Arlin Stevens said optimistically of his station's sidestep from weak CBS to strong ABC, "If there was ever a demographic that matches an ABC profile, Denver would be it."

However, KCNC News Director Jack MacKenzie could only hope that picking up CBS, a beleaguered network with a sagging lineup, would not weigh down his top-rated local newscasts, "We believe we'll outperform CBS..because we outperform NBC."

The Denver stations were used to pooling cameras for particular news events. Now, in a spirit never before seen among competing stations, not even in dozens of previous affiliation changes nationwide, the stations pooled their resources to help viewers. They decided to staff a joint hotline to help viewers decode the Big Switch. They even agreed to promote it cooperatively on the air – an unprecedented public pause in the competition.

Not that all the advance work was spin-free. Each station urged its habitual viewers to stay put. A KCNC "special" noted that the switch wouldn't dislodge the station's own newscasts: "The news does NOT move – that's the most important thing to remember."

The teamwork paid off in the end. Most viewers came through the Big Switch smoothly – although some had been offended by the grade-school tone of the promos. "A lot of people said, 'When I want to find my show, I'll look it up and I'll find it,' " Denver Post TV and radio critic Joanne Ostrow says. "But then there's a segment that calls me and still doesn't get it." In the week after the announcement of the Big Switch, about 27,000 viewers buzzed the hotline for help in tracking programs.

The switch did end up producing losses. In early fall ratings, KCNC held its news lead in several time slots, but was dragged back in the intense 10 p.m. late-news race by CBS' losing lead-ins. And third-place KMGH, in spite of better ratings compared with last year, was unable to parlay ABC entertainment into local news gains following the switch. Even preceding "Nightline" did little to help.

As in musical chairs, somebody had to win. KUSA, boosted by its new NBC programming, vaulted well ahead at 10. "The bottom line," says Lougee, "is it's been great for us."