Daytime TV's Fall Ratings Shakeout

Less than a month into the new season, daytime television's new players already have experienced two major shake-ups and increasing ratings questions for the fall's biggest star, Katie Couric. On Sept. 28, 20th Television, producer of Ricki Lake's Ricki, announced that executive producer Lisa Kridos had been replaced by Gail Steinberg, who produced Lake's previous show. The move was seen as a distress call amid middling ratings for Lake's new talker. Then, on Oct. 2, longtime CBS Television Distribution head John Nogawski was ousted, at least in part because of the disappointing start for The Jeff Probst Show. Sources say the decision to replace Nogawski after a 30-year tenure with foreign sales head Armando Nunez came from the highest level of CBS. Although domestic syndication has been losing audiences and suffering lower license fees, international is growing. Nunez is likely to bring in a new team to boost domestic development, promotion and (CBS hopes) sales. CBS still leads the domestic syndication market thanks to such shows as Judge Judy, Dr. Oz and Wheel of Fortune, but to succeed, Nunez will need to rapidly refill the domestic pipeline before those long-running hits age out of existence.