Averaging more than 10.4 million viewers, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt was the most-watched non-sports program on weekday TV last week. But like the ratings challenges network-wide in Rio, Nightly has lost viewers from the last Summer Olympics.
Compared to week one of the 2012 London Games, when Brian Williams was anchor of Nightly News and Diane Sawyer was anchor of ABC’s World News, Nightly is down -4 percent in viewers and down -11 percent in the demo, which is less than the night-to-night drop for NBC’s prime time. For the first week of Rio (Monday-Friday) NBC was down -13.5 percent in prime time viewers vs. the first week of London.
Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir was up +15 percent in viewers and flat in the demo, vs. the comparable week four years ago. CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley was also up, +12 percent in viewers, but down -16 percent in the demo.
Compared to the same week last year Nightly is up big: +31 percent in viewers and up +54 percent in the demo; World News is up +3 percent in viewers and down -5 percent in the demo; CBS Evening News is down -3 and down -6 percent, respectively.
Numbers for the week of August 8, 2016:
| NBC | ABC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 10,428,000 | 7,907,000 | 6,172,000 |
| • A25-54: | 2,965,000 | 1,726,000 | 1,364,000 |