“NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt widened its lead over “World News Tonight with David Muir” last week. “Nightly” held just at +11,000 lead over “WNT” for the week of March 9. For the week of March 16, the lead was +561,000.
Even with “Nightly News” overnight reairs (which added approximately 70,000 viewers the week before) “World News Tonight” would likely not have made up enough ground to claim a total viewer win.
However, the Muir newscast won its second week in a row in the younger demo, with a slim +6,000 (.3%) viewer lead, that’s despite “Nightly” actually winning three of the five nights last week in the demo: Monday, Tuesday and Friday.
And while NBC and ABC battle it out for first, the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” is the only newscast to see total viewer growth compared to the same week last year. Pelley’s newscast is up +4%. All three newscasts were down in the demo: NBC was down -14%; ABC down -4% and CBS down -7%.
CBS is based on a 3-day average (Mon-Wed) due to the NCAA basketball tournament. NBC and ABC are based on a 5-day average.
Numbers for the week of March 16, 2015:
| NBC | ABC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 8,518,000 | 7,957,000 | 6,930,000 |
| • A25-54: | 1,935,000 | 1,941,000 | 1,538,000 |