As 2015 draws to a close, Andrew Tyndall has crunched the numbers on how much coverage the three evening newscasts are giving to the 2016 campaigns.
Through Monday, Nov. 30 campaign coverage has made up 857 minutes on the three evening newscasts’ weekday broadcasts. That’s higher than the 12-month total of any other penultimate year (going back to 1991) except for 2007.
- 1991 = 146
- 1995 = 294
- 1999 = 339
- 2003 = 167
- 2007 = 1072
- 2011 = 790
NBC Nightly News has given the most time to the campaigns (349 minutes) vs ABC’s World News Tonight (261 minutes) and the CBS Evening News (247 minutes). Here’s how much time each party is getting:
Republican race
NBC: 227 minutes
ABC: 185 minutes
CBS 158 minutes
Democratic race
NBC: 97 minutes
ABC: 66 minutes
CBS: 63 minutes
Donald Trump is by far the most newsworthy storyline, accounting for more than a quarter of all coverage (234 minutes or 27 percent), more than the entire Democratic contest combined. Hillary Clinton is the second-most newsworthy candidate (113 mins). The other top GOP candidates are Jeb Bush (56 minutes), Ben Carson (54 minutes) and Marco Rubio (22 minutes). Tyndall found that Bernie Sanders has gotten 10 minutes of evening news airtime, while Ted Cruz has only attracted just 7 minutes.