ABC, NBC PR Departments Squabble Over Ratings

Here’s an interesting comms tibit from the never-ending battle over ratings between America’s top networks: ABC and NBC.

As Politico noted last week, NBC recently began re-broadcasting its “Nightly News” in certain markets between 2 and 4 AM; the network did not announce the decision publicly but responded to press queries by saying that it simply wanted to “reach our audience when and how they want to be reached.”

NBC made the decision back in February, not in response to the Brian Williams suspension but because ABC had begun inching closer to its ratings (for context, NBC has beaten ABC in total viewers every week since Sept.