The Lead
After the exit of Norah O’Donnell from the CBS Evening News chair, John Dickerson, Maurice DuBois, and Margaret Brennan began hosting the show.
In the first week of the reimagined program, it saw a slight dip in ratings compared to the previous week, and compared to the average of the previous three weeks.
During the week of January 27th, CBS Evening News averaged 4.8 million viewers. That figure is down slightly compared to the previous week, which saw an average audience of 4.9 million viewers.
For the three weeks preceding the change with the CBS News program, it had averaged 5.1 million total viewers.
Additionally, the newscast has seen a decline in viewers from the coveted Adults 25-54 demographic each week in January. During the first week of 2025, the program saw 743,000 viewers from that demo. Declines ensued for the following two weeks — 721,000 and 714,000, respectively — before dropping to 688,000 the first week the CBS Evening News was helmed by the new trio.
ABC World News Tonight with David Muir won the week in both total and key demographic viewers. The newscast averaged 8.3 million viewers for the week, with 1.1 million coming from the Adults 25-54 demographic. NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, meanwhile, saw an average audience of 6.9 million viewers, with 1.1 million coming in the key demo.
CNN, Newsmax See Primetime Jump
In December, Newsmax was just on the cusp of being a top 25 cable network in the primetime window with 256,000 total viewers.
During the week of January 27th, the cable network averaged 318,000 total viewers in the 8-11 PM ET timeslot, placing it as the 18th most-watched network in the timeslot.
Fox News led both the Primetime and Total Day ratings, with 3.1 million viewers in primetime and 2.1 million viewers in the total day ratings. MSNBC was third in primetime at 1.2 million, while finishing second in total day with an average of 690,000 total viewers.
CNN was fourth in both categories, averaging 684,000 viewers in primetime and 534,000 in total day. Those figures were up dramatically compared to the ratings from mid-December. CNN had fallen to 19th in primetime viewership with an average of 360,000 total viewers. It also finished sixth in the total day ratings in mid-December with an average audience of 404,000.
Newsmax was 15th in total viewers during the final week of January. It averaged an audience of 218,000.
Meanwhile, NewsNation was 52nd with an average of 121,000 viewers in primetime and 72,000 viewers in the total day ratings.
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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.
