Rise In Network News Viewership Reverse Of Other Trends

Against all odds, the long national tune-out of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings appears to be ending.

Viewership for network evening news programs is up compared with the same time last year, with gains at NBC and CBS offsetting a poor year for ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

The positive move is a surprise on several levels. It bucks prime-time audience trends, where the networks are still hemorrhaging viewers, in a year with relatively few compelling news stories.

Evening news ratings have dropped precipitously and fairly consistently for two decades.

“It turns out the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,” said NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley.

While happy about the trend, experts are at a loss to fully explain why. The remarkable competitiveness of the three programs played a role. So, maybe, did a near-death experience, exaggerated or not.

“The programs are actually improving in that they have belatedly realized that they need to go way beyond the headlines and obvious pictures and obvious sound bites to justify their existence in a world where those things are available every day,” said CBS News President Andrew Heyward.

Bad ratings, he said, “actually inspired a solution.”

The average weeknight viewership this year is 32.6 million, up 2 percent from last year’s 31.9 million, according to Nielsen Media Research. The audience share of the three shows is 50, up from 49, meaning half of the people watching TV at the time are watching one of the three shows.

The high-water mark was 1979-80, when news shows had a 76 share. With occasional brief exceptions, viewers have been fleeing every year.

But at a time of wonder whether such shows are obsolete, they have moved into one of their most fiercely competitive periods. Rather than being interchangeable broadcasts, they are developing clear identities.

Brokaw’s NBC broadcast took over the leadership position from longtime ratings champion ABC as 1997 began, and NBC has kept it for most of the year. More recently, CBS has climbed past ABC into second place and even challenged NBC some weeks.