• by February 11, 2002

The appearance of former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and other executives before a House subcommittee proved a ratings snooze for the cable television news outlets that carried the hearings live, viewership figures showed Friday.

The three 24-hour cable news networks -- CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC -- collectively averaged about 1.74 million viewers during Enron coverage on Capitol Hill on Thursday, roughly the same size audience as usual.

CNN led the pack with 835,000 viewers, followed by 629,000 for Fox and 274,000 for MSNBC.

The collective average was only slightly higher between the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time, when Skilling testified before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. Earlier, a parade of current and former Enron (ENRNQ) executives invoked the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution in declining to answer questions before the panel.

Overall, viewership for the proceedings was actually down slightly from the joint audience the three networks typically draw between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The average audience for CNN's coverage alone, however, was somewhat higher -- about 835,000 compared with a year-to-date average of 723,000, Nielsen figures showed.

Although the Enron scandal has not produced a ratings bonanza for the cable news outlets, it has sparked interest from Hollywood and the publishing world.

The FX cable channel and Artisan Television said on Thursday they had signed former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman, who was portrayed by Al Pacino in the movie "The Insider," to serve as consultant for a TV movie about the financial debacle. A number of book deals about the Enron collapse are also reported to be in the works.

Fox is a unit of News Corp. Ltd. (NCP), CNN is part of AOL Time Warner Inc. (AOL) and MSNBC is a joint venture between General Electric Co.'s (GE) NBC network and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT).

- Reuters