Morning TV shows don't reflect quality

Last week's announcement that "Good Morning America" beat NBC's "Today" show for a full week of ratings for the first time in 16 years was kind of big news, although not as big as ABC made it out to be.

Neither was it quite up to "Today" producer Jim Bell's hyperbolic assertion that his show's winning streak was "one of the most incredible achievements in television history." ABC cheered, the "GMA" cast posed for pictures and NBC was magnanimous over a difference of about 31,000 viewers, according to Nielsen.

But what does any of it mean to those viewers, who usually number between 4 million and 6 million on an average day for each ABC and NBC show, with "CBS This Morning" trailing with about 2.5 million?

The easy answer is: not as much as the broadcast networks think, but perhaps more than just which show gets a larger slice of the relatively finite (but lucrative) ratings pie from one week to the next.

Most likely, NBC will be back on top soon enough by an equally small margin because viewers' habits die hard, but there's no getting around the fact that "GMA" has spun itself silly doing whatever it can to energize its show, jettisoning significant news substance along the way.

Was there a memo from the top that every "GMA" show has to begin with the screaming yellow "Breaking News" banner? Not a terrible strategy, since information loses its value the moment it's metaphorically driven off the lot. But much of the time, the breaking news isn't all that newsy and probably broke on the Internet hours earlier anyway.

Still, the breaking-news gimmick fits the breathless pace of "Good Morning America" all too well.

Once that segment is over, we move toward the second hour, heralded with the arrival of Lara Spencer, who used to host "Antiques Roadshow." Often, the second hour is dominated by what can only be described as an ABC infomercial for its evening shows. Too bad "Dancing With the Stars" doesn't last all year long: No one would have to lift a finger trying to come up with programming for the second hour.

If NBC can't quite counter the boisterous and unending shilling of "GMA," it's in part because the network doesn't really have that many hot nighttime shows to promote in the morning.

Lauer is well cast as a blandly palatable steadying force for morning TV, but NBC erred in promoting the babbling Ann Curry as his co-host after the departure of Meredith Vieira last year. While "GMA" is certainly too giddy for words, the show's frenetic and almost nerve-racking energy only underscores how gray the "Today" show is with Lauer and Curry as co-hosts.

Since 1954, CBS has tried repeatedly to compete in the morning, without much success. The latest attempt is "CBS This Morning," with hosts Charlie Rose, Erica Hill and Gayle King, and while it's making incremental gains from week to week, it's still pulling only about half the numbers of each of the other shows. Despite its struggles, "CBS This Morning" deserves a place at the breakfast table. Without question, it is the best of the three network morning shows. But the reasons it's so good are pretty much the reasons why it hasn't been able to reverse the long CBS losing streak of morning news shows.

"This Morning" often takes its time with a story. In addition, the show not only celebrates multiple-source stories, as opposed to single subjects, but also has a knack for finding interviewees who might not fit the usual-suspect category. One reason for that is that the show's low ratings mean that momentarily hot interview subjects, hawking a new film or book, aren't going to knock at the CBS door first.