With chaos engulfing the Today show last week, the NBC morning program managed to do something it hasn’t done in a year: it had the most-watched morning show for the full week.
Today typically does well on Mondays, with a lift from NBC’s Sunday Night Football, but with Wednesday’s news of the firing of veteran co-anchor Matt Lauer, following an accusation of sexual misconduct, viewers tuned in to see how the show handled the news for the remainder of the week.
Today topped morning leader Good Morning America by +541,000 viewers or 12 percent. Wednesday’s episode averaged 5.742 million viewers. You have to go back to the 2012 London Summer Olympics for the last time Today saw viewership of that size. The NBC show also continued to lead in the A25-54 demo.
Compared to the same week last year Today was the only program to show growth, again, almost certainly due to the Lauer news. Today was up +3 in viewers but down -5 percent in the demo. Good Morning America was down -6 in viewers and down -9 percent in the demo. CBS This Morning, which saw its own co-anchor Charlie Rose lose his job the week before Lauer lost his, was also down last week vs. last year: down -7 percent in viewers and down -17 percent in the demo.
Morning show ratings for the week of Nov. 27:
- Total Viewers: NBC: 4.901M / /ABC: 4.360M / CBS: 3.525M
- A25-54 viewers: NBC: 1.723M / ABC: 1.406M / CBS: 933,000