Throughout 2021, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt made across-the-board, double-digit percentage ratings gains versus ABC World News Tonight, cutting the year-over-year total viewership gap by nearly half.
NBC’s flagship evening newscast averaged over 7 million viewers and ranked as a top five program in all of television for the majority of the year.
Nightly News also averaged 1.3 million A25-54 viewers for the year, and improved the key A25-54 demo gap versus ABC by nearly 40% since March 2021.
For the fourth quarter, Nightly News was the only newscast to grow across the board compared to the prior quarter. Nightly News also saw the largest increases in total viewers and A25-54 viewers compared to the other evening newscasts versus 3Q’21.
Additionally, Nightly News delivered its best quarterly total viewership versus ABC since 4Q’19 and its best quarterly key A25-54 demo viewership versus ABC since 3Q’20. Compared to the last quarter, Nightly News improved in total viewers versus ABC by 18% and versus CBS by 16%.
Season to date, Nightly News also improved its competitive position versus ABC by 27% in total viewers compared to the same time last year.
2021 Highlights on Broadcast & Digital
· NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt made double-digit percentage ratings gains vs. ABC World News Tonight in 2021, cutting the year-over-year total viewership gap by nearly half (+44%) since Dec. 2020 (1.705 million gap in Dec. 2020 vs. 948k gap in Dec. 2021.)
· Nightly News improved the key A25-54 demo gap vs. ABC by nearly 40% since March 2021 (389k gap in March 2021 vs. 239k gap in Dec. 2021.)
· Nightly News ranked as a top-5 most-watched program on TV for the majority of weeks in 2021 (L+SD, excluding sports, specials, and syndication.)
· Both the Saturday and Sunday editions of Nightly News were the #1 weekend evening newscasts among the key A25-54 demo for the year. Saturday’s Nightly News was also #1 in total viewers for the 26th consecutive year.
· Nightly News topped CBS Evening News in the key A25-54 demo for the 28th consecutive year; in A18-49 for the 33rd straight year; and in total viewers for the 27th straight year.
· Across digital, the newscast saw one of its three strongest years on record, with more than 75 million monthly video views on & off network digital platforms, up more than +45% vs. 2019. Nightly News also reached more than 50 million video views every month since 2020, and on YouTube, average episodes reached more than one million video views and 835,00 video viewers. [Digital ratings source: Adobe Analytics, DAVD & Partner Portals (YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo & AOL)]