Could ratings for CBS and ABC networks get worse?

The media certainly is changing, and major network news outfits including CBS and ABC are loosing audience number as ratings for the first quarter confirm a declining trend. The combined three still have a lot of viewers.

The Internet. I think the Net has quite a bit to do with it and as competition increases the big players who were once king of the roost are naturally loosing market share. I’m not saying the big networks are ignoring new delivery systems – they certainly are not – it’s just the nature of innovation.

From the New York Times.

With buyouts and layoffs in progress, the mood at ABC News cannot be good. It was probably not enhanced by the ratings report for the first quarter of the year showing that the network’s evening newscast, “World News,” had sunk to the lowest numbers the program has had in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987.

The same situation prevailed at CBS, where the “Evening News” also hit a new low for the months of January through March.

The beneficiary was NBC, where “Nightly News” scored its best first-quarter numbers since 2005.

Over all, the numbers were: 9.92 million viewers for NBC; 8.27 million for ABC and 6.45 million for CBS.

Is this a signal that viewers are abandoning network newscasts in droves?

Not really. The number of viewers still watching the three shows together — more than 24 million in the first quarter — continue to dwarf any news program on cable.

It is very important to note these network news half hours are cash cows for the networks due to the large number of viewers. But if anchors like Diane Sawyer continue to make fools of themselves… 😉

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

2 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on April 2, 2010 at 4:01 am

    The more I use the internet for news, the more I see what the mainstream media chooses not (or refuses) to report.  I watch and I see what they leave out, what they emphasize, and even body language, and I can see just how far to the left they have tilted.

     

    They are going the way of Err America.  They will not be missed.



  2. donh on April 2, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    Well the news departments may as well stop posing and move to Hollywood where they belong. All they do is create illusions of "truth" that serve the socialist agenda politics of  Washington DC. People want the reality of things reported as they exist in real world  fact. Reporting what ever some political script writer want said, and not reporting what the script writer wants ignored…that craft of creating  fake fantacy worlds to control the minds of man  belongs in Hollywood.



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