In From the Cold: Evening Newscasts See Biggest Viewership in Years

By Chris Ariens 

EveningNewsNewAn extremely cold week in most of the U.S. kept viewers indoors, with their TVs turned on — especially around evening news time. A combined 28.17 million viewers watched one of the three evening newscasts last week, the most in since the week of January 31, 2011 when 28.46 million tuned in.

Scott’s Pelley’s “CBS Evening News” posted its best viewer performance in more than seven years, since Katie Couric’s debut week in Sept. 2006. “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer,” had its most-watched week since January 31, 2011. And “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” had its best week since the 2012 London Olympics.

“Nightly” won the week in viewers and the demo, with a 1.2 million viewer lead on “World News.” The ABC newscast was No. 1 in the A25-54 demo Friday night with a 170,000 edge on NBC. Compared to the same week last year “Nightly” was up the most in viewers: up +11% (and up +5% in the demo) while “World News was up the most in the demo, up +11% and also up +11% in viewers. “CBS Evening News” was up +13% in viewers and up +4% in the demo year-over-year.

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Numbers for the week of January 6, 2014:

NBC ABC CBS
• Total Viewers: 10,693,000 9,422,000 8,051,000
• A25-54: 2,725,000 2,461,000 2,114,000

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