ABC World News Tonight with David Muir brought more ratings success to its network during the final week of July.
ABC’s flagship newscast finished the week of July 27 at No. 1 in the evenings, both in Total Viewers (8.63 million) and in Adults 25-54 (1.66 million). World News Tonight’s 8.63 million Total Viewers average means it was most-watched show on all of U.S. television for the ninth consecutive week.
ABC’s evening newscast was +11% in the A25-54 demo and +7% in Total Viewers from the same week in 2019. However, the newscast lost viewers from the previous week (July 20), -2% in Total Viewers and -3% in the demo.
Overall, World News Tonight is having its most-watched season in 17 years and strongest key Adults 25-54 performances in five years—since the 2003-04 and the 2015-16 seasons, respectively.
NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt continues to finish in second place behind WNT in the key measurements. The newscast averaged 7.44 million Total Viewers and 1.46 million Adults 25-54 during the week of July 27. It was the second most-watched show on all of U.S. television (excluding sports and syndication) and No. 3 on U.S. TV among Adults 25-54.
Nightly News also lost viewers from the prior week (July 20), -2% in Total Viewers and -3% in the key A25-54 demo. It did grow from the year-ago week (July 29) in Total Viewers (+7%), but was -1% in A25-54 demo viewers.
For the week of July 27, first-run broadcasts of The CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell averaged 5.28 million Total Viewers and 954,000 A25-54 viewers.
Those are pretty good numbers for the newscast. Compared to the prior week, Evening News was +3% in the A25-54 demo and only -1% in Total Viewers. Relative to the year-ago week (July 29, 2019), Evening News was +1% in the demo and +8% in Total Viewers.
Evening News decided not to retitle its Friday, July 31 broadcast. As we pointed out yesterday, the network had been retitling every Friday broadcast of Evening News broadcast in June and through July 24.
*Nielsen ratings for ABC, NBC and CBS include additional airings at various times during the day, and in a variety of markets, large and small.
Nielsen live-plus-same-day averages for the week of July 27:
| ABC | NBC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 8,631,000 | 7,435,000 | 5,282,000 |
| • A25-54: | 1,658,000 | 1,458,000 | 954,000 |
Source: The Nielsen Company, NTI Total Viewers, Adults 25-54 Live + SD Current Week (w/o 7/27/20), Previous Week (w/o 7/20/20) and Year-Ago Week (w/o 7/29/19). Most Current: 2019-2020 Season (9/23/19-8/2/20) and 2018-2019 Season (9/24/18-8/4/19). Nielsen ratings for ABC, NBC and CBS include additional airings in select markets. Averages based on regular telecasts. Broadcast and Cable ranker for w/o 7/27/20 based on Total Day.