2005 Annual Report - Network TV Audience

Which network is winning and losing in the evening?

One thing that has not changed is the relative strength of NBC Nightly News. While hardly immune to audience erosion, it has succeeded in recent years by managing to lose fewer viewers than its rivals lost.

Between 1993 and 2003 the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather saw its viewership fall 37%. ABC's World New Tonight's viewership fell 29%. But the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw fell the least, just 18%.

What occurred in 2004? NBC was still on top with 11.2 million viewers. Perhaps even more significant, that represented audience growth of nearly 3% from 10.9 million in November 2003. And this was the second consecutive year that NBC Nightly News showed November-to-November audience gains.¹⁰

The other two networks have not been so successful. As of November 2004, ABC was in second at 9.9 million, down 2 % (from 10.1 million the year before). CBS followed with 7.7 million viewers, down 7.2 % from 8.3 million.¹¹

In some ways, NBC's slight climb is all the more interesting because of serious challenges it faces.

Evening News Viewership, by Network

1980 - 2004

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Nielsen Media unpublished data, November - November

First, the network has lost its advantage in primetime programming over the last several years as many of it prime-time mainstays have ended. (In spring of 2004, the network ended the shows Friends and Frasier). In the sweeps month of November 2004, NBC had only one program in the top ten shows, and that was ER, a holdover from the earlier era. CBS had six, and ABC three.¹²

On the other side of the coin, the CBS Evening News has failed to gain competitively despite its prime-time success.

What impact does entertainment programming have on the success of network news? TV professionals believe news and entertainment audiences reinforce each other. More people watching prime-time programs means more people being exposed to promotions for news shows. Millions of viewers who turn off a certain network at the end of prime time are inclined to stay with that network when they next turn on the set, a so-called carryover effect. For NBC, superiority in prime time in the mid-1990s and beyond helped create a sense of brand about the network as a place for smart, hip shows. CBS, in the days of "Murder She Wrote" or "Diagnosis Murder," was the senior citizen's crime-fighting network.

The second change at NBC is the retirement of anchor of Tom Brokaw in December 2004. Dan Rather was set to leave the CBS anchor chair in March 2005. Jennings, at ABC, is 66 years old. At least some TV observers were expecting Brokaw's departure and his replacement with Brian Williams to hurt ratings. " 'Nightly News' is likely to suffer some audience erosion once Brokaw steps down, at least in the short term, perhaps allowing ABC's World News Tonight, now No. 2, to climb past NBC," The Washington Post quoted the network analyst Andrew Tyndall¹³ as speculating in April 2004.¹⁴

So far, that doesn't seem to be the case, but history suggests that audience habits move like glaciers rather than earthquakes. There was similarly little major change when Walter Cronkite handed over the anchor chair to Rather or John Chancellor gave way to Brokaw. In the current climate, Peter Jennings is a known quantity already "sampled" by most Americans. Those who like him, he already has, so while Williams might lure new people from Jennings, the opposite would occur only if Williams drove them away. Meanwhile, CBS awaits a new anchor, who might change the dynamic even further, though that may be unlikely to happen in the short term when the veteran Bob Schieffer takes over as interim anchor. Even then, Jennings's familiarity might still limit his potential.

It is rarely questioned in television that an anchor's popularity has a major influence on the ratings of the program he or she is attached to. Even here, however, it should be noted that during their time competing with each other, Rather, Jennings and Brokaw have each held every spot in the ratings competition, first, second and third. Given the diminished viewership of nightly news, anchors clearly do not have the same importance in the culture they once did. It seems difficult to believe that 30 years ago an anchorman, Walter Cronkite, was the most trusted man in America, whose reporting, the author David Halberstam argued in "The Powers That Be," helped tip public opinion against the war in Vietnam in 1968. Nonetheless, American TV networks still promote their anchors as the face of their news divisions. And anchors are the face of the networks during major news events, to the extent that the nets still try to cover those events.

PBS

The audience trends for the The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, which started in 1973 as The Robert MacNeil Report and later became the half-hour MacNeil/Lehrer Report, stand in striking contrast to those of commercial network television. Data published in the PBS National Audience Handbook show that NewsHour ratings were remarkably stable over the five years from 1998 to 2003, averaging a 1.2 household rating. According to PBS, that translates to roughly 2.7 million viewers each weeknight and more than 8 million different or "unduplicated" viewers who watch at least one night a week.¹⁵ That is still significantly smaller than even third-place CBS. But the NewsHour's ability to hold its audience distinguishes it in network nightly news.

There are several explanations of the NewsHour's stability. One is the distinctive nature of the content - longer stories, longer segments, less opinion. The other is the ability of local PBS stations to air the program later or even rebroadcast it in the late-night period. The addition of a BBC World News half-hour lead-in in many markets may also strengthen the NewsHour's appeal. Also, both host Jim Lehrer and senior correspondent Gwen Ifill both moderated presidential debates in November, while NBC, CNN and Fox News Channel had no representative. At a time when Nightline and other magazine programs are having difficulty, and commercial nightly newscasts are hemorrhaging audience, the NewsHour's numbers suggests a health that is unusual.