While two of the three evening newscasts grew their total viewer audience over the last year, all three broadcasts continued to see erosion in the A25-54 news demo.
For the 17th straight year, “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” was the most-watched evening newscast in the just-finished 2012-13 season. The broadcast was down -2% in total viewers and down -5% in the demo compared to the 2011-2012 season. “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” was up +2% in viewers and was down less than -1% in the demo. This is the closest No. 2 “World News” has been to “Nightly News” since the 2007-08 season.
For the third year in a row — and the only broadcast to do so — No. 3 “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” grew its total viewer audience by +7%. The show is up +10% from the 2010-2011 season.
But like NBC and ABC, CBS was also down in the demo, down -2%. The three evening newscasts drew a combined 5.93 million viewers last season, down from 6.5 million in the 2010-2011 season.
- Numbers for the 2012-2013 season:
NBC ABC CBS • Total Viewers: 8,372,000 7,659,000 6,431,000 • A25-54: 2,240,000 1,967,000 1,720,000