“World News with Diane Sawyer” Continues to Grow Both Overall and Demo Audiences

“ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” Grows Both Total Viewing and Demo Audiences Week-to-Week

Compared to a Year Ago, “ABC World News” Has Grown its Total Viewing Audience for 29 Consecutive Weeks

ABC Outperforms “CBS Evening News” by 1.63 Million Viewers and 405,000 Adults 25-54 – Marking Largest Demo Advantage Since April

For the week of September 5, 2011, “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” averaged 7.50 million Total Viewers and a 1.7 rating/7 share/2.00 million among Adults 25-54, according to Nielsen Media Research.  The ABC evening newscast built on the prior week in Total Viewers (+4%) and Adults 25-54 (+7%)

For the 5th week in a row, “ABC World News” grew from the same week last year in both Total Viewers (+6%)  and Adults 25-54(+7%) .  In addition, “World News” increased its streak of year-to-year Total Viewer improvement to  29 consecutive weeks. 

“ABC World News”  bettered “CBS Evening News” by 1.63 million viewers and by 405,000 Adults 25-54, turning in its largest news demo lead over CBS in more than 4 months - since w/o 4/25/11.

Note : George Stephanopoulos anchored “World News” on Thursday. “World News’” weekly average is based on 4 days (Tue-Fri), while the weekly averages for both “Nightly News” (Tue, Wed, Fri) and “Evening News” (Tue, Wed, Thu) are based on 3 days. Due to the Labor Day Holiday on Monday (9/5/11), both “ABC World News” and “NBC Nightly News” were coded specials & excluded from the average.  In addition, “CBS Evening News” was preempted for U.S. Open Tennis.  On Thursday (9/8/11), “Nightly News” was retitled “NBC-Nitely-News” and aired with low coverage (82%) due to the Presidential Address to Congress & the Nation or Saints vs. Packers NFL Football; ratings were broken out and excluded from the average. On Friday (9/9/11), “CBS Evening News” was retitled “CBS-Eve-Nws”, started late (at 6:40pm ET) due to U.S. Open Tennis; ratings are excluded from the average. 

“ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” airs at 6:30 p.m., (ET) on the ABC Television Network.  Jon Banner is the executive producer of the broadcast.

EVENING NEWS (Week of September 5, 2011)

  Total Viewers      Adults 25-54      Households
ABC       7,504,000  1.7/7; 2,004,000     5.1/10
NBC   8,570,000  2.1/8; 2,532,000     5.6/11
CBS   5,876,000  1.3/5; 1,599,000     3.9/ 8

Source: The Nielsen Company, NTI Total Viewers and Adults 25-54 Live + SD weeks of 09/05/11, 8/29/11 & 9/6/10.  2010-2011 Broadcast Season (9/20/10 – 9/9/11) and 2009-2010 Broadcast Season (9/21/09 – 9/10/10).