Week of Oct. 4 Morning Show Ratings: GMA, Today Split First Place as Ratings Drop

By A.J. Katz 

For the 10th consecutive week, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today split the weekly morning show ratings race. GMA averaged the most total viewers (3.255 million), while Today captured the most adults 25-54 (881,000) for the week of Oct. 4, 2021.

This is according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day for the third week of the 2021-’22 TV season.

GMA out-performed rival Today by +140,000 average total viewers, maintaining its lead from the prior week (140,000 vs. 139,000). ABC’s morning show shed -1% in average total viewers, and -3% among adults 25-54. Compared with the year-ago week (Oct. 5, 2020), the show was -7% in total viewers and -14% in the A25-54 demo.

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NBC’s Today show 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 314 out of the past 319 consecutive weeks. In addition to averaging 881,000 adults 25-54 (+80,000 than GMA and +354,000 than CBS Mornings), the NBC morning show averaged 3.115 million total viewers during the week of Oct. 4.

Today also won in total viewers Monday morning, likely aided by NBC Sunday Night Football.

Similar to GMA, NBC’s morning show lost -1% in average total viewers, and-3% among adults 25-54 from the previous week. Year-over-year, the NBC morning show was -6% in total viewers, and -13% among adults 25-54, as younger demos continue to leave morning TV news shows on an annual basis.

CBS Mornings averaged nearly 2.5 million total viewers to go with 527,000 A25-54 viewers last week. This represents a -2% decline in average total viewers and a -2% decline in the demo from the previous week. The broadcast also shed -7% of its average total audience and -15% among adults 25-54 from the same week in 2020.

Live-plus-same-day numbers for the week of Oct. 4, 2021:

ABC NBC CBS
• Total Viewers: 3,255,000 3,115,000 2,491,000
• A25-54: 801,000 881,000 527,000

 

 

 

Source: The Nielsen Company, NTI Total Viewers, Adults 25-54. Live + SD Current Week (w/o 10/4/21), Previous Week (w/o 9/27/21) and Year-Ago Week (w/o 10/5/20). Most Current: 2021 -2022 Season (9/20 – 10/10/21 and 2020 -2021 Season (9/21 – 10/11/20). Beginning 8/31/20, national ratings also include Out of Home (OOH) viewing. Averages based on regular telecasts. 

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