Network news continue to lose viewers

According to this NY Times article, Brian Williams at NBC has lost 570,000 viewers over the past year and Katie Couric has 120,000 viewers since becoming CBS anchor:


Mr. Williams had led the news ratings virtually every week since taking over for Mr. Brokaw, the longtime leader, in December 2004.

Mr. Williams’s broadcast remains the most-watched among viewers this television season, drawing about 9.3 million each night, compared with 8.8 million for Mr. Gibson and 7.5 million for Ms. Couric, according to Nielsen Media Research.

But for the four-week period that began Jan. 29 and ended last Friday, Mr. Gibson’s broadcast was seen by an average of 9.69 million viewers a night, about 43,000 more than the 9.65 million who watched Mr. Williams’s newscast. (Ms. Couric’s CBS program trailed at 7.6 million.)

More notable has been the erosion in Mr. Williams’s lead over the last year. Erosion is not uncommon for the network newscasts, which have been steadily losing viewers. Still, Mr. Williams has lost an average of a little more than 570,000 viewers over the last year; Mr. Gibson’s audience has grown by just under 60,000 viewers.

Ms. Couric’s CBS newscast, which remains a distant third, has lost about 120,000 viewers from the program that was led last year at this time by Bob Schieffer. Asked yesterday whether any changes were in the offing for the CBS newscast, Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports, said: “As we’ve said all along, this is a very long process that takes many months, if not years. We’re not losing any patience.”