Television

NBC Nightly News Drawing Biggest Audience in Eight Years

New York, NY

Nightly posted the largest year-over-year growth among the three newscasts last week and holds its best total viewer advantage over ABC in 13 years.

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" continued as America’s most-watched network evening newscast for the week ending February 28, 2014, according to Nielsen Media Research data. In its first week following the Sochi Winter Olympics, Nightly’s audience was larger than its first weeks following Vancouver (+3 percent) and Torino (+2 percent).

Nightly posted the largest year-to-year growth among the evening newscasts, moving higher by +7 percent (+661,000) in total viewers.

Season-to-date, Nightly is currently posting its biggest audience (9.512 million) since the 2005-06 season and its largest advantage over ABC World News (+1.203 million) since the 2000-01 season.

Weekly Highlights:

  • Nightly delivered 9.642 million total viewers, +1,204,000 more than ABC World News’ 8.438 million and +2,396,000 more than CBS Evening News’ 7.246 million. 

  • Nightly averaged a 6.5/12 Household rating, ahead of ABC’s 5.6/10 and CBS’ 4.8/9.

  • Nightly has outperformed World News by at least one million total viewers for 5 consecutive weeks and in 14 of the last 17 weeks.

  • Nightly delivered a 2.0 A25-54 rating, +1 tenth ahead of ABC’s 1.9 and +5 tenths more than CBS’s 1.5 rating.

  • Among A25-54 (000), Nightly averaged 2.366 million viewers, +92,000 ahead of World News’ 2.274 million, and +573,000 ahead of Evening News’ 1.793 million.

Trends:

  • Nightly has won in total viewers for 233 consecutive weeks, and in 280 of the past 281 weeks.

  • Nightly has won in viewers A25-54 for 274 of the past 275 weeks.

(Photo: AP Images)