NBC, ABC and CBS’s evening newscasts all lost viewers this past week, compared to the same week last year (week of Feb. 1, 2016).
NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt ranked No. 1 across the board, defeating ABC World News Tonight with David Muir by +1 percent in total viewers, and CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley by +25 percent in total viewers. Nightly News has won across the board nine times in the last 11 weeks. NBC also took the top spot among adults 25-54 and has now achieved this feat for 79 of the past 80 weeks. That said, Nightly News was -3 percent in total viewers and -5 percent in the key news demo from the comparable week in 2016.
ABC World News Tonight was -1 percent in total viewers and -3 percent in the key news demo relative to the same week in 2016. The newscast is drawing its 2nd-largest overall audience in 9 years – since the 2007-08 season, and its closest overall viewer performance with Nightly News in 18 years – since 1998-1999 season.
The CBS Evening News, on the other hand, posted the largest year-over-year decline of the three newscasts. The program was -6 percent in total viewers, and -16 percent in the news demo relative to the same week in 2016, which happened to be Super Bowl week for the network.
Numbers for the week of Jan. 30, 2017:
| NBC | ABC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 9,104,000 | 9,032,000 | 7,290,000 |
| • A25-54: | 2,230,000 | 1,992,000 | 1,580,000 |