Network Evening Newscasts' Ratings Stall During Election 2008

If anything could slow the inexorable decline of evening news viewership, it should have been this year's riveting presidential campaign, which produced a ravenous appetite for political news.

The cable news networks benefited mightily during the race, more than doubling their prime-time audiences this fall. And some broadcast news programs saw big gains: "60 Minutes," up 12% this season, attracted 25 million viewers Sunday for its interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, the largest audience for a television program this season.

But the overall number of people watching the network evening newscasts actually shrank slightly in the last months of the presidential campaign, despite the programs' heavy political focus -- down 280,000 viewers since Sept. 22 compared with the same period last year, according to an examination of Nielsen Media Research data.

Of the three programs, the top-rated "NBC Nightly News" was the only one to register an uptick in audience, growing 1% to 8.37 million viewers. ABC's "World News" fell 2% to 8.2 million viewers while "CBS Evening News" dropped 3% to 6.1 million viewers.

The contraction of the audience at a time when viewers were aggressively seeking news speaks to the challenge the programs face in a landscape increasingly cluttered with media choices.

Once the country's dominant news platforms, the three flagship network newscasts found themselves jockeying this season with cable channels and Internet sites to deliver the freshest political updates.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[drumz]

They are useless. How can they be anything but since they work for corporate amerika. It's all middle of the road BS.

[JohnnySmith]

The main stream media (MSM) is not doing their job. The MSM is supposed to report news and call BS on candidates when they out and out lie. Instead, the MSM has become nothing more than a talking head for the candidates. They accept what the candidates give them at face value without investigating and knowing whether they're passing on a lie or not. The American public no longer trusts the MSM.
Additionally, they spend a large part of their broadcasts on feel good, personal interest stories or celebrity news. I don't care if one of the Spears girls is pregnant or getting divored or was spotted out drunk somewhere. I want to know what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to know what's happening to my investments on Wall Street. I want to know how the latest piece of legislation that was passed by Congress and signed by the president is going to affect me.
In plain and simple words, I want the news and I want to be able to believe it again.

[Durango]

It is because the no longer report news. just political blather.

Try this Network Executives.

Fire the Anchor personalities. Use the millions of dollars saved and hire reporters. And editors.

Station them around the USA and around the world. Have them report on what is HAPPENING IN THE WORLD!

Get rid if the nightly medical miracle stories that seem designed to pump up the anchors stock portfolios. If all those medical miracle stories were true nobody would be dying any more.

I bet there is plenty of news in Uzbekistan every day to fill a 30 minute broadcast. Let alone the USA.

Or the world.

[indy girl]

That's because network news is OLD by the time it airs---anyone really interested in being current on the news gets it on the internet hours earlier. Often I read a breaking news story online Tuesday night, but it won't appear on network news until the next day...when ABC tries to make it look like a Really Hot Story!! more than 12 hours late. They are behind the power curve.

Dan Rather, Brit Hume and other anchors on the networks were also so pompous and smug--as if they were the only ones who could read a story in that magical extra special way to really explain it to the American people. It was no surprise that they all faded into irrelevancy when the internet arrived. Katie Couric's disastrous evening news move was less about Katie and more about the fact that people weren't watching anyway. There was no time on the evening news to do anything in great detail, so the stories were more like News Lite.

And now of course you have dingbats like Diane Sawyer trying to invent news out of tabloid fodder like Eliot Spitzer's hooker. The networks have dumbed down the news so far that no one cares what they have to say.

[OSA23]

'traditional' network news remains out of step with that goes on behind the scenes and between the lines simply because network news are teethered to the dollars and economy of their advertisers afraid of sponsoring 'controversial' products, ie network news....

while brian wiliams was amazing as host of saturday night live and when he makes his appearance on the daily show with jon stewart - he's condemned per se to sit behind the nbc nightly news desk attached to their formula of what news should be. meanwhile - countdown with keith olbermann and the rachel maddow show, and the daily show with jon stewart and the colbert report ALL score so well because the viewer can be challenged to see the news beyond the news -

why subject my neural system to being treated like a child by the BIG 3..? and even cnn seems useless to me because of their approach to reporting the news seems teethered to be so high tech and so 'hip' that cnn chooses to gloss over many stories without approaching the stories from the perspective of exploring the depths and dimensions of the stories being 'reported' by them.

[skibiketrash]

Why are my posts disappearing?

[JohnnySmith]

It sounds like the work of the "posts gnomes" who go around gobbling up people's posts on internet blogs.

[skibiketrash]

I watched CBS and afterward watched either NBC or ABC and found it very amazing that it was almost word for word the same news just different reporters. All three networks are too busy looking to up their ratings through entertainment journalism by trying to be the first to report breaking news. I think it was CBS that reported the Ashley Todd story and then failed to mention the next day that she had made the whole thing up. In their rush to report the story, all three networks seem to get the facts wrong more than 50% of the time. The press is supposed to be the fourth branch of goverment and they have failed us miserably!!!!

[Durango]

When the Bush Administration officials are tried for Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes the major American Corporate Media hacks should be right there in the docket with them.

Charged and tried as enablers of those crimes.

The American Corporate Media is nothing short of a disgrace.

[drumz]

Precisely!

[dejayel]

If they want the audience back, add real content, limit the commercials to no more than three minutes, stop doing "soft' news; the network viewers aren't interested in gossip. Give that function to FauxSnoose.

[Chironomid]

Trouble is their "news" is just as shallow and predictable as cable, but without the entertaining personalities and panel-jousting. It's all a bunch of cr@p, but the cable networks are at least fun at times.

CSPAN is about the only TV news outlet left where you can actually learn anything and at time, really go deep.

[LollieDotCom]

And they talk about the car industry! They're just like them. Provide inferior product, ignore the real stories, go for the distractions, ratings before country, ratings before our world, integrity is all too often a joke. It's "junkfood" news, and in times as serious as these we desperately want and need "so nutritious Dr. Oz eats it up" news.

A non partisan version of the Rachel Maddow show if that could be done - that's what would settle us on a major news network. In the meantime, I'll just watch Rach.

However, I do want to say, I gotta give it up for NBC, the world condition stories are important and terrifying. Ann Currey, you must not do that again. Really. You worry people to death.

[KarateKid]

Times have changed. This is another business affected by the Internet. Why watch watered down headlines when you can get detailed news on cable and on the Web?

[terkid]

The numbers are in. The viewers have spoken.

I guess we're liking our news, especially election news, without their veiled attempts

at impartiality. The bright new cable news stars bring something else to the table

beside rote reading of what "happened today." We're asking for and getting more

from the Keiths, the Rachels, even the idiots at Fox...

like what does what happened today MEAN? What are the motives and political

agendas at work? What are the character issues at work behind the rhetoric?

These spirited and passionate opinions actually pepper up the "reporting" of

the machinations of our political process- add spice, color and humanity.

Sorry network stars- but you're bland, boring and add nothing to the party,

bring nothing to the table beyond the recitation of tele-prompted words...

like Capote said, it's the difference between writing and typing.

[Shieldmaiden]

Maybe if they actually gave us actual news we would watch.

[freebeer]

This is good news. It means less of us are being fooled by their lies.

But as the mass migration to onliine news continues, the same big media players move to carve out their share of this pie too. They must keep us dumbed down.
We fight back by sourcing our truth from multiple sites, using our critical thinking skills and never giving any government our blind allegiance.

Our mass media may not be honest or accountable, but as good citizens we have to be.

[chi01]

They should try and follow the BBC style, or Newshour with Jim Lehrer.