ABC Wins Evening News Season in Total Viewers, NBC Takes the Demo

ABC won the total viewers race in evening news for the 2016-2017 season, while NBC took the viewers 25-54 contest. ABC’s World News Tonight tallied 8,301,000 total viewers for the season, ahead of NBC’s 8,204,000 for Nightly News. CBS’ Evening News was at 6,578,000. 

ABC was flat with the previous season in total viewers, while NBC lost 5% and CBS dropped 6%. 

NBC won the adults 25-54 demo with 1,949,000 million viewers, ahead of ABC’s 1,760,000. CBS did 1,448,000 million. NBC lost 7% year over year, while ABC dropped 6% and CBS lost 11%. 

David Muir anchors the ABC newscast. Lester Holt anchors for NBC. Scott Pelley held the job for most of the season at CBS before taking on a full-time role at 60 Minutes, and Anthony Mason was named interim anchor in late May. 

ABC said it was the network’s first win in evening news total viewers in 21 years, when Peter Jennings anchored in 1995-1996. 

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.