NBC Completes Year Atop the Evening News Ratings

NBC’s “Nightly News” has completed its first yearlong stretch on top of the evening news ratings since the days of the Huntley-Brinkley report.

Tom Brokaw’s broadcast beat its rivals at ABC and CBS for the second three months of the year, the fourth consecutive quarter it has won. That’s the network’s longest winning streak since mid-1967, when Chet Huntley and David Brinkley anchored the news.

NBC’s “Nightly News” displaced the long-running ratings leader, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” last year and has won the competitive race consistently week-to-week.

“Obviously, it’s very gratifying,” Brokaw said. “It’s especially pleasing to be able to share this with a lot of people who have been through some long, dark days here and now have emerged into the sunlight.”

While Brokaw concedes “Nightly News” has benefited from NBC’s overall strength in prime-time and news programming, he believes viewers have responded to its efforts to concentrate on longer, more in-depth stories.

The program has experimented in recent months by turning over more than half of some broadcasts to single topics, like the economy, sexual harassment, Iraq and the nation’s parks system.

“We’ve worked hard at re-energizing the form,” he said.

For the year’s second quarter, “Nightly News” averaged just under 9.5 million total viewers. The “CBS Evening News” had nearly 9.2 million and “World News Tonight” 9 million.

Brokaw’s broadcast won last week, too. It had a 7.2 rating and a 17 share for the week, followed by CBS’ 6.7 rating and 16 share, and ABC’s 6.6 and 16.

A rating point represents 980,000 households, or 1% of the nation’s estimated 98 million TV homes. Share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.