As Campaign’s Intensity Peaks, Interest in Big 3's Evening News Continues to Wane

Three weeks out from Election Day, surely more Americans are tuning into the Big 3 networks' evening newscasts, right?

Wrong.

In the past two weeks, Big 3 evening newscast viewership has actually declined by 360,000, or 1.6%. What's more, in percentage terms, viewership among "The Demo" of ages 25-54 has declined even further (220,000, down 3.1%).

Here are the rest of the gory details for total viewers (Source: MediaBistro's TV Newser - week of Oct. 6; week of Sept. 29; week of Sept. 22; Year Ended Sept. 2008):

Here's what it looks like for the 25-54 demo:

Yikes.

Given that almost anyone would have expected the nets to at least hold steady through Election Day, it's not unreasonable to surmise that some of the declines above might be due to:

• Charles Gibson's slanted and selectively edited interview of Sarah Palin on ABC.
• Katie Couric's similarly biased effort for CBS. Her Palin interview likely accounts for the ratings bump during the week of September 29, but notice that CBS was back below it two-week-ago level the following week. Is that a backlash?
• The ongoing MSNBC-ization of NBC.
• Relentlessly biased reporting in general.
• All of the above.

This result offers some hope that viewers -- and voters are looking for more accurate information in outlets outside of traditional media.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.