The Lead
ABC World News Tonight continues its lead over NBC Nightly News, but the program helmed by Lester Holt continues to cut into that lead.
During the week of January 6th, the show averaged 7.4 million viewers for the week. That marked the highest average for a week since the first week of August last year. At that time, the network was in the midst of a ratings bump provided by coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
In the coveted Adults 25-54 demographic, NBC Nightly News averaged 1.2 million viewers during the week.
The ABC News program anchored by David Muir led the way with 8.9 million viewers in total, with 1.3 million viewers coming from the Adults 25-54 demo.
Meanwhile, CBS Evening News averaged 5.2 million total viewers. The program — anchored by Norah O’Donnell before she exits the show later this month — earned an average of 743,000 viewers in the key demographic.
Newsmax Cracks the Top 25 in Primetime
As the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump nears, Newsmax is experience a ratings bump that has propelled it into the top 25 cable news networks in primetime.
During the week of January 6th, the network saw an uptick of 18% in the 8-11 PM ET timeslot. The conservative cable network averaged 277,000 viewers for the week, placing it as the 23rd most-watched network on cable TV.
That growth is a five-place jump for the network compared to the previous week in the overall cable television rankings.
The Fox News 500
The news that MSNBC and CNN have experienced a ratings downturn since the presidential election isn’t anything new or groundbreaking.
However, new data shows just how dominant Fox News has been since Donald Trump secured the presidential election win.
Since Wednesday, November 6th, Fox News has scored more than 500 of the top ratings broadcasts, according to figures from Nielsen.
CNN’s highest broadcast since the Wednesday following the election was the 4 PM hour on that day after Trump secured victory. The network averaged just over 1.9 million viewers in the hour.
Additionally, that was also the highest-rated broadcast since election day for Fox News. The conservative cable channel saw an average of 7.3 million viewers.
The 4 PM ET hour on Wednesday, November 6th is when Democratic candidate Kamala Harris made her concession speech, making her first public comments since Trump won the election the previous night.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
