Atlanta Evening, Late News Viewing +5%

Atlanta is remarkable in that three of its four evening news time periods enjoyed noticeable growth, according to a TVNewsCheck analysis of Nielsen’s count of weekday viewers aged 25 to 54 of news at 5, 6, 10 and 11 p.m. during the May sweeps. Those gains delivered a 5% overall increase in evening and latenight news viewers compared to May 2013 (11 o’clock was the only time period with a decline.)

ABC’s WSB more or less owns the market while Fox’s WAGA is a strong second at both 5 and 6 p.m. NBC’s WXIA takes a sporting run at third place, but CBS’s WGCL trails in distant fourth place.

At 5 o’clock, WSB (+14%) has an almost 2-1 lead over nearest competitor WAGA (+9%). WGCL was down 11% for a distant third.

Its 24% increase at 6 p.m. gave WSB an even more commanding lead over WAGA (-3%), a distant second. WXIA (+32%) continues in third, followed by WGCL (+11%).

Atlanta has only two broadcast newscasts at 10 o’clock and they finished in the same order as last May: First-place WAGA (+11%) and independent WATL (-25%).

Despite a 28% drop at 11, WSB continues to lead the time period by a wide margin. WAGA (+26%) remains second; WXIA (-6%) is still third; and WGCL (-35%) is fourth.

At 6 o’clock, Spanish-language WUVG recorded a gain of 214%, while the Univision station’s 11 o’clock newscast was up 166%.