ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer” has won its first May sweep in the younger demo in 7 years. It’s the first victory in any sweeps month in more than 6 years for “World News” — since February 2008.
ABC topped “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” by +42,000 A25-54 viewers. Williams’s broadcast, meanwhile, won the month in total viewers with its biggest May sweep audience and widest lead over “World News” in three years.
All three broadcasts were up among total viewers with NBC and ABC up +6% and CBS up +5%. But “World News” was the only broadcast to show demo viewer growth compared to May 2013. Sawyer’s show was up +9%, while “Nightly” was down -6% and the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” was down -2%. In fact, this is the lowest May sweep since at least 1991 (when the keeping of electronic records began), for both NBC and CBS in the A25-54 demo.
For the week of May 19, “World News” wins in the demo with a +106,000 viewer lead on “Nightly News,” while “Nightly” takes total viewers with a +467,000 viewer lead on “World News.” All three newscasts were down in viewers and the demo compared to the same week last year, which saw extended coverage of that deadly tornado in Moore, OK.
Numbers for the week of May 19, 2014:
| NBC | ABC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 7,850,000 | 7,383,000 | 5,997,000 |
| • A25-54: | 1,790,000 | 1,896,000 | 1,446,000 |