NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley each delivered positive results this past week, perhaps aided by David Muir’s week-long vacation from ABC World News Tonight. Nightly delivered its biggest total viewer victory over World News Tonight in 10 weeks, and its biggest A25-54 win since January of this year. Nightly also had its biggest single-day audience since May 16, reaching 8.5 million total viewers on Monday, June 27. Interestingly, Nightly was down 7 percent in total viewers, but up 11 percent in the news demo compared to the same week last year.
The CBS Evening News came extremely close to defeating WNT in the key news demo. The Eye’s evening newscast was down 4 percent in total viewers but up a whopping 22 percent in the news demo year-over-year.
Despite Muir’s absence, World News Tonight was up less than 1 percent in total viewers and up 4 percent in the news demo from the same week in 2015. Muir was also absent from WNT this same week last year, so the improvement isn’t as surprising as one might think.
*Lastly, it’s important to note that last week’s ratings for Nightly News and World News Tonight are based on the usual five-day average. Last week’s ratings for CBS Evening News, however, are based only on a four-day average (Mon-Thurs). This same week in 2015, ratings for each of the Big 3 newscasts were based on a four-day average (Mon-Thurs). This was due to the July 4th holiday.
Numbers for the week of June 27, 2016:
| ABC | NBC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 7,513,000 | 7,804,000 | 6,467,000 |
| • A25-54: | 1,546,000 | 1,896,000 | 1,538,000 |