ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir again finished the season on top in total viewers and the key demographic, averaging 8.74 million total viewers. NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt averaged 7.32 million and CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell posted 5.4 million. But all the network evening newscasts saw their viewership drop in 2020-21 versus a year earlier.
The three evening newscasts were each expanded to an hour Thursday following a busy news day that included the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, shot down near the Russia-Ukraine border, and the launch of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza following 10 days of heavy violence there.
