Barrett Media produces over 20 stories per day on the music, news, and sports media industries. To make sure you’re updated on the latest happenings across the media business, sign up for our newsletters to get the news delivered straight to your inbox.
ABC World News Tonight has steadily featured ratings wins over NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News. The program led by David Muir saw those gains increase last month.
During the final week of September, the network saw it’s largest lead over NBC Nightly News in 29 years during the premiere week. The five day period was the network’s largest viewership in seven weeks and was also the highest performance it had seen in the key Adults 25-54 demographic in nine weeks.
The week of September 23rd saw ABC World News Tonight with an average audience of 7.5 million viewers. That eclipsed the figures from the Lester Holt-led program on NBC News (6 million), and the show anchored by Norah O’Donnell for CBS News (4.6 million).
In the Adults 25-54 demographic, the ABC News show saw 1,039,000 million viewers on average. That bested the efforts from NBC News, which saw average viewership of 929,000, and CBS News, which saw 680,000 average viewers.
During September, David Muir moderated the ABC News Presidential Debate — alongside Linsey Davis — that featured quick fact-checking against Republican nominee Donald Trump. Many observers believed it was biased in nature, leading them to posit the ratings for ABC World News Tonight dropping slightly in the days following the debate.
However, the slight ratings dip coincided with a carriage dispute between The Walt Disney Company — parent company to ABC — and DirecTV that saw channels removed from the satellite provider’s lineup.
During the week of September 16th, the ratings for the program anchored by Muir rebounded after Disney television channels were reinserted for DirecTV subscribers. The show averaged 7.2 million viewers for the week, up from the 6.9 million it featured during the week following the debate. During the week of September 23rd, the numbers continued to increase, nearly reaching its average for the year, which stood at 7.6 million before the debate.
