Olympics Give A Boost To ‘NBC Nightly News’ With Two Weeks Of Ratings Wins

NBC and its streaming service Peacock saw a big viewership boost from the Olympics, and the Paris Games also gave the network’s nightly newscast two weeks of ratings wins.

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NBC Nightly News averaged 7.62 million viewers, topping ABC World News Tonight with 7.52 million and CBS Evening News with 4.45 million.

NBC Nightly News also was first in the 25-54 demo, averaging 1.47 million, followed by World News Tonight with 1 million and CBS Evening News with 583,000.

Lester Holt anchored Nightly News from Paris throughout the games.

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The numbers also are improvement from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when World News Tonight still beat Nightly News in total viewers, although the NBC broadcast still topped in demos. NBC said that Nightly News grew 8% in total viewers and was up in the demos this year versus 2021.

Absent an Olympics, it’s pretty hard to shake broadcast network viewership habits, in which World News Tonight has led for years. ABC News noted that it led Nightly News on Tuesday and Thursday of last week, while it has a lead 1.27 million viewer lead over NBC for the season, and 3.1 million over CBS.

This week’s numbers are for Monday to Thursday for CBS and ABC, which excluded their Friday telecasts from the averages.

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