Evening News Audience For Week of March 29 Falls Below 20 Million

After a bit of a respite primarily due to NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics, the audience desertion from the Big 3 networks' evening news broadcasts has again resumed.

Not that the first quarter of 2010 was all peaches and cream. Last week, Media Bistro noted that ABC's "World News Tonight" had "its lowest-rated first quarter ever."

But the results for the first week of the second ratings quarter are beyond awful. The total audience for all three evening news shows came in under 20 million. For context, recall that during a traditionally low-audience summer week in 2006, Drudge headlined ("TV's Lowest Week") a disastrous drop -- to 21 million viewers. Now it appears that what was once considered a really bad summer week four years ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) might be a typical week during 2010's prime spring viewing season.

Here's how last week's audiences compare to the same week a year ago:

There are double-digit drops across the board. The overall decline is even worse in the 25-54 demographic.

Perhaps the decades-long, slow-motion audience revulsion at the networks' insufferable bias is being aided and abetted currently by their more recent efforts at demonizing Tea Partiers, i.e., ordinary Americans. If that's so, their springtime audience crash may accelerate.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.