Audience

According to data from Nielsen Media Research, 60 Minutes remains by far the most watched of the prime time news magazines on network television.

Newspaper readership—the number of different people who read a newspaper each week—is a higher number than circulation. While declining, still over half of adult Americans say they read a paper regularly.

The audience for network evening news is old, nearly 60.

The readership of Sunday newspapers is now dropping across every educational level.

All three of the major news weeklies have struggled to keep readers in recent years. But the relative position of the three has remained the same. 

Newspaper readership has long skewed old. What is new, and worrisome for the industry, is that the readership percentage has begun to decline across all age groups, even those over 50.

In recent years La Opinion has seen its audience grow while El Nuevo Herald's circulation is largely unchanged. El Diario's has dropped.

2006 Annual Report - Ethnic Media Audience

The readership of most news magazines is aging—and faster than the population overall. The exception, The Atlantic, has the oldest readership of all.

Fox News surpassed CNN in viewers in 2000. By 2005, Fox News had nearly twice the daytime audience of CNN and almost three times that of MSNBC. In 2006, it saw its first ever dip in daytime viewers. MSNBC was the only cable news channel to see an uptick.

Historically, newspaper readership has risen with education. What is worrying newspaper executives is that the numbers have begun to drop across all education levels.