For the first time in more than six years, ABC‘s World News With Diane Sawyer beat NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams in the news demo for a second consecutive week. Last time it happened it wasn’t “with Diane Sawyer” because Charlie Gibson was anchoring back in March of ’08 when ABC’s newscast last enjoyed two weeks of demo ratings wins.. Sawyer took over as anchor in December of 2009. The week of April 14, ABC’s newscast also posted its largest victory over NBC’s in that 25-54 age bracket in more than five years. Sawyer’s newscast beat Williams’ by 85,000 demo viewers. One week earlier, Sawyer’s win was by a slim 12,000 demo viewers. ABC’s newscast bested NBC in head-to-head competition on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday during the week of April 14.
Season to date, World News has narrowed its season margin with NBC Nightly News in Adults 25-54 by double digits (-33% – 221,000 vs. 332,000) compared to its season margin at the same point last year. Cutting its demo gap for the 4th consecutive season, World News is enjoying its closest news demo performance relative to NBC’s program in six years.
NBC continues to clock the largest overall audience — 8.571 million viewers last week, to ABC’s 7.924 million and CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley’s 6.274 million. NBC also has more viewers in the younger 18-49 demo — 1.484 million, to ABC’s 1.410 mil, and CBS’s 989,000.
Here’s a demo track for the three broadcast network evening newscasts, beginning the Monday after NBC’s coverage of the Sochi Winter Olympics ended:
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