On June 10, Brian Williams will be four months into his six-month suspension from NBC News for lying about being in a helicopter hit by enemy fire in Iraq in 2003.
NBC has yet to decide Williams’ fate, despite intermittent rumors (most recently that NBC News chief Andy Lack is “contorting” in trying to keep Williams, and his annual $10 million salary, at NBC in some capacity, according to CNN).
The good and bad news for Lester Holt, who’s been anchoring the “NBC Nightly News” since Feb. 9, is that he’s kept the newscast tops in total viewers (barely) — while ABC’s “World News Tonight,” anchored by David Muir, has surpassed “Nightly” in the coveted news demo of adults 25-54.
“It is not definitive in either direction — by and large [Holt] has maintained most of the audience he inherited, even in the absence of any promotional effort on his behalf,” says news analyst Andrew Tyndall. “So Williams cannot argue that his return is an imperative to keep the newscast afloat.
“At the same time, Holt has been unable to halt and reverse ABC’s continuous secular improvement in the ratings vis-a-vis NBC,” Tyndall says. “So he has not demonstrated that he inarguably deserves the job.”
From Feb. 9 through May 24, the most recent date for which Nielsen data is available, “NBC Nightly News” has averaged 8.44 million total viewers — only 120,000 more total viewers than “World News Tonight” in that same time frame.
“World News Tonight,” meanwhile, has averaged 2.04 million viewers in adults 25-54 since February — compared to 2 million viewers for Holt’s “Nightly News.”
ABC has, in fact, been slowly closing the gap in adults 25-54 for the past year, topping NBC in the key demo last November (when Williams was still in the anchor chair) and last July (when Diane Sawyer anchored for ABC).
“This wasn’t all of the sudden NBC’s ratings dropped — this has been a slow and steady process,” says Billie Gold, VP/director of TV programming research at media agency Carat. “The Brian Williams thing just pushed it.”
(“CBS Evening News” remains in third place, averaging nearly 7 million total viewers since February — up 2 percent season-to-date with anchor Scott Pelley.)
“If [‘Nightly News’] ratings hold at what they are now and don’t start decreasing … they will keep Lester there,” Gold says. “I don’t see anyone that they could put on the desk that would do better than Lester.”
NBC News declined to comment.
A spokesperson for ABC News said: “David and the team remain focused on connecting with the viewers every single night and we’re just glad the audience seems to be responding.”