The week of the midterm elections was a great one for “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” with the program getting a healthy bump in viewership Nov. 1-5.
The “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” also saw a slight bump, while “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” was slightly down compared to the previous week.
“Nightly News” was first with 8.67 million total viewers, the best total viewer advantage over “World News” since February. Compared to last year however, “World News” closed the gap in the demo by 12%
While the ratings may be strong for 2010, they are all down substantially from the midterm election week in 2006. NBC and ABC are down by over one million viewers, with CBS is down more than two million viewers.
Full numbers (and an Update) for the week of November 1, 2010 are after the jump.
| NBC | ABC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total: | 8,670,000 | 7,230,000 | 5,660,000 |
| • A25-54: | 2,530,000 | 2,010,000 | 1,670,000 |
Update: A reader writes in to note that daylight savings time may have played an impact in the ratings decline from 2006:
I think it should be noted that in 2006, daylight saving time ended on the last Sunday in October rather than the first Sunday in November. Therefore, the 2006 election week was while the country was on standard time while 2010 happened during daylight time. The time change seems to matter a lot for these newscasts.
Did it have an impact? Quite possibly, though the evening newscasts have also been losing viewers at a steady rate every year since 2006.