Evening News Ratings: Week of Sept. 2

By Chris Ariens 

In Brian Williams’ return to “Nightly News” following knee replacement surgery, the NBC program holds its No. 1 spot, while ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer” gets the closest its been in nearly a year.

The first week of September saw several pre-emptions. Usually, the newscasts exclude holidays from the average. But this year, “World News” kept Labor Day in the mix. As it turns out, that was a big day for ABC. The newscast drew a whopping 8.8 million viewers last Monday, the most-watched “World News” in five months.

Monday’s “NBC Nightly News” and “CBS Evening News” were excluded from the averages, as was Friday’s “Evening News” due to the U.S. Open and Thursday’s “Nightly News” due to the NFL opener.

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Compared to the same week last year, “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” saw the biggest growth among total viewers (+9%) but the biggest drop in the younger demo (-9%). ABC was up +3% in viewers and up +5% in the demo while NBC was up +1% in viewers and flat in the demo.

Numbers for the week of Sept. 3, 2013:

NBC ABC CBS
• Total Viewers: 7,797,000 7,624,000 6,065,000
• A25-54: 2,017,000 1,856,000 1,455,000

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