David Muir Continues ‘World News’ Demo Dominance

David Muir’s first week as the anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight picked up where Diane Sawyer left off with another win in the adults 25-54 news demo.

For the week of Sept. 2, World News Tonight drew 2.04 million viewers in the demo, which topped NBC’s Nightly News (1.97 million) and CBS’ Evening News (1.61 million) for the fifth straight week. It was also the ninth time in the past 10 weeks that ABC has come out ahead in the demo. 

Among total viewers, Nightly News maintained its own stretch of dominance with 8.47 million viewers, topping World News’ 8.27 million and CBS Evening News’ 6.5 million. The win marked five years as the most-watched newscast for Nightly News.

Muir’s first week was up 5% from the previous week in the news demo and rose 12% among total viewers.

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, the first night that Muir and NBC’s Brian Williams faced off head-to-head, Nightly News came out ahead of World News with both total viewers by +529,000 viewers and the news demo by +111,000 viewers.

NOTE: Because of Labor Day and sports coverage, NBC is based on three days: Tue, Wed, Fri; CBS is based on thee days: Tue, Wed, Thu; ABC is based on four days: Tue-Fri.