For the 15th consecutive week, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today split the weekly morning show ratings race. GMA averaged its largest average total audience in 10 weeks (3.42 million viewers), while Today captured the most adults 25-54 (916,000) of any morning show for the week of Nov. 8, 2021.
This is according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day for the eighth week of the 2021-’22 TV season.
GMA out-performed rival Today by an average of +94,000 total viewers per original broadcast last week. Relative to the prior week, ABC’s morning show gained +5% in average total viewers, and grew by +1% among adults 25-54. However, GMA was down -3% of its average total audience and -8% in the A25-54 demo from the year-ago week. Now, to be fair, the comparable week in 2020 was the post-2020 presidential election week, a time when more Americans are focused on morning TV news than usual.
NBC’s Today finished the week No. 1 among adults 25-54, which means the program has earned either an outright win or first-place tie in the key A25-54 demo for 319 out of the past 324 weeks. Quite a run!
In addition to averaging 916,000 adults 25-54 (+87,000 than GMA and +360,000 than CBS Mornings) last week, Today averaged 3.33 million total viewers. The 3.3 million total viewer average for Today is +9% from what the broadcast averaged the prior week, and the 916,000 adults 25-54 average is +4% from the previous week. In addition to winning the key demo, Today averaged more total viewers than GMA on Monday and Wednesday. However, as expected, NBC’s morning show shed -3% in average total viewers and -12% in adults 25-54 from the comparable week in 2020.
CBS Mornings averaged 2.61 million total viewers to go with 556,000 A25-54 viewers last week. That’s +7% in average total viewers and +9% adults 25-54 from the previous week. A nice week-to-week trend for the program. That said, like ABC and NBC, CBS was down from the comparable week in 2020, -7% in average total audience and -7% in A25-54 audience.
It was a pretty good ratings week for the morning shows, at least by 2021 standards.
Live-plus-same-day numbers for the week of Nov. 8, 2021:
| ABC | NBC | CBS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| • Total Viewers: | 3,422,000 | 3,328,000 | 2,610,000 |
| • A25-54: | 829,000 | 916,000 | 556,000 |
Source: The Nielsen Company, NTI Total Viewers, Adults 25-54. Live + SD Current Week (w/o 11/8/21), Previous Week (w/o 11/1/21) and Year-Ago Week (w/o 11/9/20). Most Current: 2021 -2022 Season (9/20 – 11/14/21) and 2020 -2021 Season (9/21 – 11/15/20). Beginning 8/31/20, national ratings also include Out of Home (OOH) viewing. Averages based on regular telecasts.