Today, ABC Owned Television Stations is announcing a new 10 a.m. newscast beginning Sept. 11 in New York, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham. The broadcast will fill the time slot previously held […]
After 13 years, Good Morning America hosts George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts have passed an improbable milestone without public notice. They’re now the longest-serving pair of hosts ever on any ABC, CBS and NBC morning show. They’ve presided during a time GMA took over from Today as the most popular morning show and have kept that distinction for a decade, yet also as the shows diminished in audience and influence.
After years spent battlingABC’s Good Morning America, the venerable NBC morning news franchise is now eyeing the crowds that flock to consumer publications like People, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Vogue. On Tuesday, the morning-news mainstay will unveil its first digital cover story, an in-depth look at creator and actor Issa Rae that will get exposure not only on its digital site, but on the linear TV show and across its social channels. The belief is that a series of deep-dive stories on newsmakers and cultural figures launched via the show’s digital channels will lure new audiences interested in lifestyle and consumer news.
Never count out Today in the morning show wars. The venerable NBC a.m. franchise has for weeks been losing a critical ratings category to its main rival, ABC’s Good Morning America. The ABC show has long been the most-watched broadcast-TV morning-news program in the nation, while Today typically dominates among the viewers advertisers want most — people between 25 and 54. But for more than two months, that hasn’t been the case; GMA has taken the lead in both overall viewership and the ad demo. Last week put the brakes on ABC’s progress.
For the past four weeks, GMA has eked out gains over NBC’s Today in a critical audience category that can help determine how much advertising money Madison Avenue invests in news programs. GMA typically cedes viewers 25-54 to Today, but for each of the past four weeks has instead won.
Exclusives
More than most news programs, morning shows on ABC, CBS and NBC thrive by fostering a sense that their personalities are a chummy family. Now, due to coronavirus restrictions, those family members appear onscreen in dislocated boxes, and invite viewers into their homes instead of vice versa.
Hoda Kotb’s return to Today boosted the NBC morning show’s ratings above competitor Good Morning America last week. Today topped GMA both in total viewers and in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 for the week of Sept. 2, according to Nielsen. Overall, Kotb’s first week back from maternity leave pulled in an average of 3.872 million live-plus-same-day viewers compared to GMA’s 3.835 million. In the demo, the numbers were 1.202 million to 1.150 million.
NBC’s Today was the No. 1 morning show across the board for the second consecutive week, and also got a solid ratings bump from NBC’s Olympics coverage. But compared to week one of the 2014 Sochi Games, Today was down double digits, including a 31% drop among adults 25-54.
CBS News named Face the Nation host John Dickerson as the new co-anchor of its CBS This Morning, replacing Charlie Rose. He will join Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell on the A.M. franchise and will no longer host his Washington-based Sunday morning political show..
It’s easy to compare Hoda Kotb’s salary to predecessor Matt Lauer’s and cite gender inequity. But TV thrives on paying new hosts less.
As far as hard-knocks origin stories go for television hosts, it does not get much better.
Ending the post-Matt Lauer period of uncertainty, NBC has named Hoda Kotb (right) co-anchor of Today, pairing with Savannah Guthrie. Kotb will continue her long-running teaming with Kathie Lee Gifford in the 10 a.m. hour of the morning show.
For the second consecutive week, the first two hours of the NBC morning program surged ahead of the show’s main rival, Good Morning America — not only capturing its usual lead among people 25-54, the demographic most coveted by advertisers — but among overall audiences as well. It’s the first time the venerable A.M. show has done so since late 2016, when it beat GMA among total viewers for the weeks of Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, 2016.
‘Today’ Dominates Ratings With Lauer Firing
It was the week’s top morning show. NBC also won the week in primetime, averaging 9.3 million viewers. CBS had 7.7 million, Fox had 5.4 million, ABC had 4.8 million, the CW had 1.8 million, Univision had 1.6 million, Ion Television had 1.3 million and Telemundo had 1.1 million.
Michael Strahan, Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos opened Monday’s broadcast of Good Morning America laughing over the strains of a 1972 King Harvest tune about dancing in the moonlight — a teaser for a segment about a bright phenomenon known as a “supermoon.” The trio is supposed to smile. This is, after all, morning television. But things taking place in the world of A.M. TV are enough to set the hosts at all the shows gritting their teeth.
After Sunday’s shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church, the network morning shows offered extended coverage of the massacre Monday morning.
Just like their evening news counterparts, the three network morning shows have also lost more than 1 million viewers in the last year. In 2016, the three shows averaged 13.903 million viewers. Last month, the average was 12.766,000, a loss of 1.137 million viewers, or 8%.
NBC News’ Today finished first among broadcast morning shows in total viewers and demos in December, celebrating its first non-Olympics monthly win in more than four years. As the programs all talked up their stats for the final quarter of 2016, Today topped the pack in the news demo, with 1.79 million viewers aged 25-54, besting ABC’s Good Morning America (1.53M) and CBS This Morning (1.12M).
NBC is taking back more ground in the scorched-earth morning-news battle between its Today and ABC’s Good Morning America. Today wooed more viewers overall than its rival, as well as in the audience most coveted by advertisers, for the week ended Nov. 28, the second time it has done so in the last two weeks.
NBC’s Today has finished the 2015-16 TV season as the No. 1 network morning show among the 25-to-54 age group that matters most to advertisers. The win in the demographic is the first since the 2010-11 season, when Today was having its historic 16-year run as the top-rated morning program.
The NBC morning show sees ad dollars grow sharply with highly rated Olympics and widens its lead over rival Good Morning America on ABC. Just a few issues linger.
CBS’s telecast of the big game is expected to give extra attention to the network’s CBS This Morning, which is steadily becoming a player in the morning TV world. CBS hopes new viewers tune in, and the show’s Gayle King has the spotlight of an interview with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama during the pregame show.
ABC’s Good Morning America had the most viewers last week. The program has won the count for 16 weeks in a row this season, and it ranks first for the fourth season in a row. NBC’s Today was first in the 25-to-54 age group, which is most important to news advertisers. But CBS This Morning, which ranks third, was up 8% from the comparable week last year while ABC was off 10% and NBC was down 6%.
Jan. 14 is the 64th birthday of NBC’s Today show. In 1952 there was no reason for families to turn on their newfangled TV sets in the morning … until NBC gave them a reason. This was a big deal because once they turned the TV set on in the morning, the set tended to stay on — a factor in the stunning rise in the amount of television consumption since.
NBC and producers are feeling more optimistic about the morning-show’s prospects. ABC’s Good Morning America remains the nation’s most-watched morning program — a position it swiped from Today in 2012 amid viewer backlash over the ouster of then-host Ann Curry — but Today has beat GMA steadily among people between 25 and 54, the audience most desired by advertisers.
Television’s top morning show is in its first prolonged slump since overtaking NBC’s Today in popularity three years ago. Good Morning America is losing viewers, most rapidly among a younger demographic that advertisers eagerly seek, where NBC has wrested back the lead from its rival. The search is on for those missing viewers, many of whom ABC executives suspect have turned off morning television altogether, and for ways to lure them back.
Three years after NBC’s Today show suffered a humiliating fall from first to second place in the morning ratings race, the show has found its way back to first, partly through the leadership of Lauer and his co-host Savannah Guthrie. It is a case study in television and a case study in perseverance.
At Rockefeller Center on Thursday, free Starbucks drinks and desserts were NBC’s restrained way of recognizing that the Today show has now beaten arch-rival Good Morning America three of the past four weeks. The hosts and executives don’t want to get carried away. The title of No. 1 morning show is still very much up for grabs. But that, in itself, is worth celebrating for the Today show, which has spent three frustrating years as the No. 2 show.
NBC’s morning telecast has been mired in second place behind ABC’s Good Morning America for years. But it’s been quietly racking up victories recently — enough to put ABC on edge. In the key demographic for news advertisers, viewers 25-54, Today has beaten GMA for the past two weeks. This is significant because Today hasn’t been No. 1 for two weeks in a row since the beginning of 2013.
In the early morning news race that has been dominated for decades by ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today, CBS News’ CBS This Morning (and earlier iterations of it) have trailed so far behind GMA and Today in Nielsen ratings that it has almost been unfair to include it in the same conversation. These days, CBS This Morning, which is three-and-half years into a creative overhaul led by Chris Licht, is still No. 3. But it’s also the only one of the three shows that’s on fire.
Things could get worse for NBC’s Today show before they get better. A program of Comcast’s NBC/Universal, Today lost its long-time ratings title to Disney-owned ABC’s Good Morning America three years ago, and now risks falling into third place behind CBS This Morning, produced by the news division of CBS.
CBS This Morning is broadcasting its entire two-hour show Wednesday from the new 102nd floor observation deck at One World Trade Center. The observation deck at the New York City skyscraper, the tallest in the United States, opens to the public on May 29.
Digital Morning Shows Trying To Take On TV
At this year’s NewFront presentations, traditional and digital publishers have pushed video hard, but one genre has reared its head just enough to stand out from the crowd: morning shows.
In 2011, new NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke famously implemented Project Symphony, an effort to synergize better the various corners of the empire to help promote one another. Nowhere has the strategy been more evident than on the morning news show Today, which regularly plugs NBC and its sister properties. But is Today more shameless than its rivals?
