Is the evening network newscast on the rebound?
After a disastrous 30-year period in which the U.S. audience fell by more than half, are the Big Three staging an against-the-odds comeback? And could it be happening just as everyone else in Old Media is being rocked by things digital?
As unlikely as that seems, something is happening. The evening news audience has now grown in three of the last four years, according to Nielsen, and is up about 12 percent since 2010. It appears 2015 will be yet another growth year. Compared to the 57 percent decline that began in 1980, this must feel like a Super Bowl victory to network executives.
The long decline of the evening news was actually worse than that 57 percent number because it came during a time when the U.S. population grew by more than 80 million people. On a per-capita basis, then, the drop has been more on the order of a calamitous 70 percent. That’s comparable to newspapers’ plummeting circulation that occurred during the same three decades. Continue reading A turnaround for network news?