Evening News Ratings: Week Of Nov. 28

The NBC Nightly News has outperformed ABC’s World News Tonight by over one million viewers for five straight weeks. For the week of Nov. 28, NBC won all five nights in total viewers, homes and the 25-54 demographic.

Right, Brian Williams speaks at a staff luncheon last week, honoring his one-year anniversary as anchor. For the week, in total viewers, NBC averaged 10,524,000, ABC had 9,103,000 and CBS had 7,984,000.

“Since Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff have anchored World News Tonight (9/26/05-to-date), Nightly’s advantage has soared to 14% or averaged a +1,158,000 viewer lead. Prior to their taking over (4/4/05 – 9/25/05), Nightly News’ advantage was just 4% or +364,000,” NBC’s press release says. Also, in the 25-54 demographic, “Nightly’s advantage is now 4% vs. being tied before they took over.”

Other ratings points:

> The CBS Evening News “has increased its total viewers in more weeks than any other evening newscast during the 2005-06 television season,” CBS says. Season-to-date, CBS is the only newscast to increase in total viewers and households. CBS “is up in eight of 11 weeks and six of the last seven weeks;” NBC “is down in 10 of 11 weeks and the last 10 straight weeks;” and ABC “is down in nine of 11 weeks and the last eight straight weeks.”

> Year-to-year, World News Tonight is the only newscast to grow in the 25-54 demo.

> Update: 5:44pm: “It’s not surprising that CBS has grown from last year,” an e-mailer says — “at that time they were at their lowest point. A year ago they were smack in the middle of the National Guard Memo muck and Dan recently announced his resignation. At some point they are going to bump back up more ‘normal levels,’ albeit still a distant #3.”