Lester Holt won his first November sweep as anchor of NBC Nightly News. In the news demo the November sweep win is NBC News’ 18th of the last 19.
Today’s ratings results are good news for NBC; last year, ABC World News Tonight With David Muir won the November sweep in the news demo – ABC’s first such win in 18 years. That marked Muir’s first sweep as anchor of the ABC newscast; he officially took over for Diane Sawyer in September of ’14. That November sweep also marked Brian Williams’ last as anchor of Nightly News; he was suspended in February of this year for six months, in the wake of his chopper story controversy, and never returned to the newscast.
NBC’s Holt-anchored newscast logged a 1.9/7 in the news demo (2.263M viewers). ABC’s World News Tonight With David Muir followed with 1.7/7 (2.059M) in the demo and CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley logged 1.5/6 (1.752M). Nightly was the only broadcast to post gains in the news demo versus the November ’14 sweep: NBC gained 8K viewers, while ABC shed 239K and CBS 101K, with both posting record lows in the news demo for a November ratings derby.
In total viewers, NBC’s newscast has won its 33rd consecutive win in a sweeps period, and its 14th consecutive November sweep. But ABC’s newscast narrowed its total viewer margins with Nightly News by 54% compared to last November (259K vs. 568K for November 2014), to mark its closest total viewer performance to NBC during November in eight years. And CBS’s newscast logged its best November sweep delivery in viewers in nine years, its closest competitive position with NBC in viewers for a November sweep in 17 years. CBS’ newscast also is the only one of the three to grow in viewers compared to last year’s November sweep: up 5% to 7.75M from 7.36M.
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