Network TV Audience Trends

Any discussion of the state of network broadcast news would be incomplete without mention of the Sunday morning programs. The vast majority of the public knows those shows less from actually viewing them and more from the references to them in the Monday morning papers or clips on other TV news programs. The Sunday shows are largely designed and programmed for a stable, affluent, influential niche audience that is demographically appealing for advertisers. A survey of Sunday Nielsen weekly average numbers on Media Life Magazine’s Web site shows a picture almost identical to a year earlier —particularly striking because 2004 was an election year when most politically focused programs experience swells, with dips the next year. It appears that contemporary Sunday morning news is immune to that pattern.

Network by network, the picture looks the same as well. NBC’s “Meet the Press” leads, with ABC’s “This Week” holding a lead over “Fox News Sunday” but still trailing CBS’s “Face the Nation.” In November 2005, “Meet the Press” won the sweeps period with an average of 4.3 million viewers. That was 34% more than “Face the Nation” (3.2 million) and more than 60% over “This Week” (2.6 million). “Fox News Sunday” was a distant fourth with just 1.4 million viewers.12 Sunday morning is the only part of the day all week when Fox’s news operation competes directly with the networks on its broadcast stations. At other times its competition is confined to its news cable channel. That may change in 2006. Fox is reportedly preparing a half-hour broadcast news program to compete each evening as well.

There is also the perennial odd man out of the Sunday programs. CBS’s long-running “Sunday Morning” program is a blend of arts and culture reporting that stands in contrast to the hard-line political conversations of the other network other fare on those mornings. It also contrasts with the celebrity, show-business focus of the weekday morning programs’ entertainment coverage. And it more than holds its own. (PBS’s NewsHour does devote a fair amount of time to the subject, our content studies suggest.)13