NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams” will move timeslots for the fourth time, to 9pmET/PT Wednesday. So how did the primetime newsmagazine do for the five weeks it aired at 10pm?
On March 7, the first night in that timeslot, the program had 3.53 million viewers. Ratings dropped the following week, with the March 14 “Rock Center” drawing just 2.61 million viewers, the lowest since its October debut.
The next three weeks hovered in the same range — 3.02 million on March 21; 3.34 million on March 28 and 2.97 million last week, April 4.
As NBC News president Steve Capus predicted, the show has largely failed to move the ratings needle since its debut. The highest ratings for “Rock Center” were on January 23, with 7.13 million viewers. But that was a GOP debate in Florida which carried the “Rock Center” title. In comparison, Williams’ “Nightly News” averaged 9.15 million viewers for Q1 2012, during a time of day when there are far fewer homes watching television.