Morning Shows, Newsmags See Audiences Decline
Sure, the ratings for the evening newscasts are steadily sinking. That twenty-year-old trend is hardly surprising. But a new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism highlights a less-publicized decline for two other television news segments: morning shows and newsmagazines.
The morning TV competition has remained consistent for a decade: NBC's "Today" attracts the most viewers, ABC's "Good Morning America" persistently places second, and CBS's "The Early Show" finishes third. But for three years in a row, ratings for morning TV have softened, a report entitled State of the News Media 2008 notes.
In 2007, 12.7 million viewers watched on an average morning, down 4 percent from the year before. According to the research firm's analysis of Nielsen Media Research ratings, morning news peaked in 2004 with 14.6 million viewers and has declined each year since.
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New York Times/TV Decoder | Brian Stelter | March 17, 2008 08:22 AM