Lester Holt Newscast Takes News Demo; David Muir’s Lands Total Viewer Win For Full Season

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt finished first among evening newscasts in the news demographic for a 22nd consecutive full season (see numbers below).

And, for a third consecutive 52-week season, NBC News’ programs finished first in three marquee derbies in the demo, also including a morning news win for Today and Chuck Todd’s Sunday Beltway show Meet the Press.

But ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir took the full 2017-2018 season in total viewers by largest margin over NBC Nightly News in 22 years. ABC’s newscast was the most watched by the largest lead over NBC’s in 22 years, nearly half a million viewers; it lead CBS Evening News by 2.4 million viewers.

ABC’s David Muir-hosted World News Tonight was the only evening newscast showing growth in overall audience and in the demo, compared to last season, delivering its biggest haul in 13 years. Meanwhile, Nightly clocked its smallest overall audience since at 1991 and CBS Evening News turned in its lowest total viewer tally in six years and its weakest demo delivery since ’91.

Today took the 25-54 age bracket news programming advertisers target, and logged its best total-viewer margin in six seasons versus ABC. But Good Morning America ruled morning’s in total viewers.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd is the most-watched Sunday Beltway show across the board for the second consecutive season, and outperforms all competitors in the news demo for the third straight season. Meet the Press will post its largest total viewer advantage over ABC’s This Week in six seasons and CBS’ Face the Nation in seven seasons. In the influential Washington, D.C. market, Meet the Press dominated every week in both metrics and is the only such program to grown in both relative to previous season.

The numbers:

EVENING NEWS

ABC’s World News Tonight (8.577M viewers; 1.757M news-demo viewers)

NBC Nightly News (8.071M viewers; 1.824M news-demo viewers).

CBS Evening News (6.144M viewers; 1.267M news-demo viewers).

MORNING PROGRAMS

ABC’s Good Morning America (4.112M viewers; 1.261M news-demo viewers)

NBC’s Today Show (4.048M viewers; 1.418M news-demo viewers)

CBS This Morning (3.256M viewers; 855K news-demo viewers)

SUNDAY BELTWAY SHOWS

ABC’s This Week (2.952M viewers; 794K news-demo viewers)

NBC’s Meet The Press (3.398M viewers; 957K news-demo viewers)