NBC ‘Nightly News’ bleeding viewers, too
Cory Bergman June 25th, 2007
With all the attention paid to Katie Couric and ratings decline of CBS Evening News, the AP’s David Bauder takes a look at second place NBC Nightly News. He writes:
“All the attention paid to Couric’s tough start at CBS has overshadowed what’s been going on at NBC. In Couric’s first 39 weeks at CBS, she’s lost 287,000 viewers from the average of a year ago, a drop of 4 percent from predecessor Bob Schieffer’s audience. At the same time, “Nightly News” lost 533,000 viewers, or 5 percent, Nielsen said.”
Explains Brian Williams, “I, honest to God, couldn’t tell you what the ratings are and couldn’t tell you that for days on end,” he said. “It really is immaterial in a way. There isn’t anything we can do on a given day to tweak.”
4 Comments Add your own
1. Richard | June 25th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Explains Brian Williams, “I, honest to God, couldn’t tell you what the ratings are and couldn’t tell you that for days on end,”
Katie should be heartened to see that. Such a comment indicates that Brian and crew have designs on dead last.
2. Pat | June 25th, 2007 at 10:20 am
In my opinion, Brian Williams is the FIRST person who looks at the numbers, not someone who “couldn’t tell you what the ratings are and couldn’t tell you that for days on end.”
A Matt Lauer-led “Nightly” would be number one. Lauer carried Couric and he’s much more trusted than Williams, who seems to have practiced his gestures and mannerisms in front of a mirror over the years in anticipation of one day replacing Brokaw.
3. Bob Jones | June 25th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Quick, somebody tell O’Reilly - he’ll be taking credit, next!
What will Bernie Goldberg do without the chance to bash Ms. Couric?
4. Tim | June 25th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
CNN and ABC will probably drop too. The problem (in my not-so-humble opinion): all of them are dropping news coverage in favor of celebrity / human-interest coverage. If I want warm, fuzzy, happy-ending stories I can watch Lifetime or one of Disney’s family networks. It’s not Couric’s fault, I don’t think; I think network execs look at the ratings of things like “Hollywood Insider” and want to make the same kind of numbers.
Maybe a network should try these steps:
1. Take a clue from Rosenblum, drop the anchors, go to journalists-only (whether VJs or reporter-camera teams)
2. Decide to show 30 minutes of news without advertising (OK maybe 28, a minute before and a minute after of ads I could live with).
3. Treat newscasting as the public trust / First Amendment responsibility you’ve always told us it was, rather than as another source of ad revenue.
4. Make accuracy and timeliness the means for rating the news department’s employess and deciding their budgets.
It’s worth a shot - what they’re doing now sure isn’t working.
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