"NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" On A Ratings Roll

"NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" handily won the evening news ratings race last week, beating ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" by over 1.25 million viewers. Its the 18th week in a row that "Nightly" has won in total viewers ratings.

For the week of February 9-15, 2009, Brian Williams' broadcast averaged 9.444 million total viewers, compared with Gibson's 8.187 million and Katie Couric's 6.750 million total viewers.

The 9.4 million viewers snapped "Nightly's" streak of four weeks in a row averaging over 10 million viewers, a sign of the evening news broadcasts' resurgence amid a groundswell of negative economic news and interest in the Obama administration.

In the advertiser-friendly Adults 25-54 demographic, "Nightly" shows signs of dominance as well. The broadcast averaged 3.210 million viewers in the demo, compared with ABC's 2.500 million and CBS' 2.090 million. "Nightly" has grown 10% in the demo compared to the same period last year.

Comments

[Bulbul]

07:38 AM on 02/20/2009

Actually all three of them are good. For me every eve was Gibson, after the election I do watch more of Williams. Not for any particular reason.

[momof3inGA]

08:43 AM on 02/20/2009

Gibson's coverage hasn't been as thorough as Brian's. I TiVo both and NBC News is consistently above par. Much more balanced, as well. IMO.

[AndThenOneDay]

08:34 PM on 02/19/2009

I thought Fox was #1.

[raker]

09:44 AM on 02/19/2009

I'd love to see a place on HuffPo just to vent about the outrageous things we hear on The Brian Williams Show. Every single night he comes out with three or four tortured sentences that, while being technically true in some aspects they are fundamentally dishonest, and it's always at the expense of the Democrats or progressive views. And most of his sentences contain a cliche, sometimes apropos of nothing, like "to add insult to injury..." when there's neither insult nor injury. It just sound right, rhythmically, so it's in. He does that kind of thing a lot.

And then there's the weather report (on the evening frikking news, the weather report!! And not even a real weather report but just time-killing, Weather Channel-promoting banalities like "clouds are moving across the plains." NBC reports about 18 minutes of news a night, and two minutes of it is a product placement for one of its cable channels.

[chocolatecity]

08:31 AM on 02/19/2009

Brian Williams is one cool dude.

[sweetwhine]

10:48 AM on 02/19/2009

Sexy too.

[carl99e]

06:22 AM on 02/19/2009

I wondered at Williams a couple of times when he interviewed GW Bush and could bearly look him in the eyes when Bush would give one of his slippery answers. He was one of GWB enablers. He does seem to preen a lot. I watch from time to time just to see what is considered news by the mainstream media. Usually a disappointment.

[BaileyWo]

02:02 AM on 02/19/2009

If Brian Williams would keep his FoxNews style, pro-Bush comments to himself his ratings would be even higher. He was having a nightly anxiety attack trying to figure out how to revive the McCain Campaign and it really, really showed. I refuse to give him the time of day. Katie's my girl.

[AK24]

01:50 AM on 02/19/2009

Watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC 9pm E

[Bluestarglow]

09:32 PM on 02/18/2009

Congratulations Brian... Ever since you took over from Tom Brokaw you really put your own stamp on The Nightly News. In addition your impeccable fashion sense has raised the GQ bar higher than anyone else on the network. After my man pointed out that you were named one of Esquire's Best Dressed Men in the World, you have become my man's personal fashion guru.

Thanks for giving the guys and the girls a reason to tune in...

[BaileyWo]

02:04 AM on 02/19/2009

Howdy Doody had more polish and was even more animated. AND Howdy was a democrat.

[cminri]

09:05 PM on 02/18/2009

Whats not to like about Brian Williams?!? I think he's fantastic.

[BaileyWo]

02:05 AM on 02/19/2009

Let's start with the sleeve of his suit coat -- his neocon politics are all over it.

[ljkcan]

08:59 PM on 02/18/2009

Brian Willian is hillarious when he is on any of the talk shows. He has a tremendous sense of humour. I liked to watch ABC when Peter Jennings was alive since then I watch Brian Williams.

[schicklett3]

08:51 PM on 02/18/2009

I'm a Wolf Blitzer fan and enjoy his CNN program, The Situation Room.
I'll check out Brian Williams show.
I'm so sick of turning on the cable news and hearing nothing but republican talking heads spewing their hate aganst our new president.....they all want him to fail, and the news media is giving them plenty of airtime to get their message across to the sheep that don't have the sense to research and learn the truth and believe everything these republican nitwits say.

[GoogleMaster]

10:45 PM on 02/18/2009

You're right. It seems that recently, anytime that Obama speaks, seconds after he's finished talking false talking heads are in immediate attack mode. The sheep get fed and the talking heads are further emboldened and give strength for their next attack.

[bachmantsk]

12:11 AM on 02/19/2009

You are absolutely right. I turned those cable news shows off several weeks ago. Guess it's time to go back to network evening news. And judging from the ratings, looks like the negative coverage of our new President is losing cable news a lot of viewers. Think they'll figure it out pretty soon?

[TAIsabel]

08:40 PM on 02/18/2009

No surprise to me. I have been a fan for years and have followed him from show to show. He is a very decent human being with a "fierce" sense of humor. I loved his interviews back when he had an hour show.

Congratulations Brian!

[hangdogit]

08:32 PM on 02/18/2009

I avoid NBC news, partly because Brian Williams does not seem to understand the role of the period (.) at the end of a sentence. He constantly uses run-on sentences, such as: "This is a bad Winter when we come back more details on ..." (and then the next story). This truncated and illiterate speech sounds too much like modern text messaging instead of English.

Katie Couric uses sentences with real periods at their end -- she actually understands how to speak.

[TAIsabel]

08:44 PM on 02/18/2009

Actually, it is more like William Faulkner.

[KayDGee]

09:25 PM on 02/18/2009

The only problem is that she spits those periods out and the resulting pause hangs like a big loogie. While Katie is still out there finding herself , Charlie Gibson's not so veiled tilt to the right is hurting his ratings. They are all under the thumb of their advertisers, but Williams is more middle of the road and certainly more self assured, but not smug. Great attributes for network news. I still miss Peter Jennings...

[1logicalthinker]

10:25 PM on 02/18/2009

I still miss Don Harris, one of the best journalists, killed at Jonestown.

[BaileyWo]

02:09 AM on 02/19/2009

I miss Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite.

[JohnFObama]

08:18 PM on 02/18/2009

I first saw him on Letterman, liked him and have started watching his show since then.

[JodyMcg]

09:37 PM on 02/18/2009

I first saw Williams with the Palin interview. He busted on her before Couric did. Love Brian.

[oneblackvote]

08:13 PM on 02/18/2009

I like Brian Williams, Keith, Rachel and David Schuster.