2004 Annual Report - Network TV Audience

After a night of bad news, network executives are probably quick to tell themselves things will look better in the morning.

And they do. Morning show viewership, in contrast with evening, has held steady and in some cases has actually risen slightly in recent years.

As of November 2003, 14.6 million Americans watched the three network morning news shows, one million more than a decade earlier.

The rise has not been steady. For instance, looking again at the critical November sweeps numbers, ratings rose in 2000, during the Florida election fiasco (14.5 million Americans watched the morning shows). Yet a year later, as the U.S. moved into Afghanistan after September 11, the number of people watching the morning shows was actually smaller (13.8 million). The number drifted upward again in November 2003.²⁶

Morning News Viewership, All Networks

November 1993 to November 2003

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com

Why have morning shows proved more stable than evening? Again several factors likely converge here.

Clearly the question of time slot is significant. The morning shows are on, or at least begin, when most Americans are still home, just starting their days. The number of people home in the evenings is shrinking.

The researcher Andrew Tyndall also theorizes that on the two top morning shows - the "Today" show on NBC and "Good Morning America on ABC - a factor in their appeal is that they offer 20 minutes of content without commercial interruption. People wanting news and information, or even diversion, in the morning and getting ready for work will leave when the commercials start. In an age of growing commercial time, this stands out.

The morning shows are also far more flexible and lighter in content. They can fill their time with infotainment, scandal mongering, tabloid fare, thinly veiled reality programming (wedding planning or makeovers) or seasonal recipes, all with a straight face. Or they can devote the first half-hour to news from Iraq or Washington, although they do not often do so.

The morning shows have also tinkered with their formats and changed their looks somewhat more than the evening newscasts to keep viewers interested and freshen their genre. In 1994, NBC began the wave of changes when it moved the show back to a ground-floor studio in Rockefeller Center in New York City that had a window out onto the street (as it had in its earliest days with its first host, Dave Garroway) and began to incorporate the street crowd more in the program. Not long after, CBS and ABC followed suit with their own elaborate studios.²⁷ (The trend has also spread to cable: both CNN and Fox News use street-side studios for their morning programs.) Morning musical guests and street concerts also became a bigger part of the morning show routine in this time. And the weather segments have become longer features that involve the assembled throng. In many ways, too, the anchors of the "Today" show and "Good Morning America," particularly Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer, are the biggest stars of the news divisions today, the most highly paid and promoted.

Morning news programs are attractive to advertisers because they provide access to a younger audience than the evening programs. In fall 2003, according to analysis by Magna Global USA, a market research firm, the median age for each of the networks morning shows audience ranged from 51.3 to 53.1 years, compared with 59.5 to 61.2 years for each of the network's evening shows.²⁸ Looked at another way, while the 25-to-54-year-old audience for evening news is 27 percent larger than the morning news audience, the 50-plus demographic is 145 percent higher than the same demo during morning news. The morning shows are a more efficient way to reach the younger audience that advertisers prefer.²⁹ The morning programs also get "softer" as the younger demographics go to work and the nonworking mothers and older viewers remain at home.

Median Age of News Program Audience

Design Your Own Chart

Source: MagnaGlobal USA, "Daypart briefings"

''Today'' on Top

Among the morning shows, NBC's "Today" has been the clear leader since 1995. Its viewership had actually risen to the top spot by a significant margin in the mid-1980s but declined after the network's takeover and shakeup by General Electric. "Today" vaulted back to the top in the mid-1990s after the arrival of Katie Couric and after it moved to its street-level studio, largely taking viewers from ABC. Overall, "Today's" audience is 38 percent larger than it was a decade ago (6.5 million viewers in November 2003, up from 4.7 million viewers in November 1993).³⁰ "Today's" totals peaked at 7.2 million in November 2000 when NBC's Tim Russert appeared on an almost daily basis, having sealed his reputation as a political oracle with his Election Night blackboard prediction that results would depend on "Florida, Florida, Florida."

Morning News Viewership

November 1993 to November 2003

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com

ABC's "Good Morning America" now draws the same number of viewers that it did a decade ago, but it has been a roller coaster ride. The No. 1 morning show in 1993, its audience fell by 36 percent by 1998. After revamping the show around Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer in 1999, it had rebuilt its audience by the November 2003 sweeps back to 5.2 million viewers. That had narrowed the gap with "Today" but still put it in second place by 1.3 million viewers.³¹

CBS's "Early Show" is a distant third. Despite ups and downs and format changes, its audience in November 2003 was 21 percent smaller than a decade earlier.³²