Look Out Below: Nets' Evening Newscasts Hit 2nd Straight Collective All-Time Low

How the once mighty have fallen.

In the midst of covering the performance of the broadcast networks last week, David Bauder at the Associated Press noted the following (HT Kevin Alloca at Media Bistro):

Meanwhile, the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts combined for a dubious record last week: the average of 18.7 million people who watched one of the three shows last week was the smallest audience those three telecasts have reached collectively on record, since the infancy of television, Nielsen said.

During the slow news period of late August, the broadcasts broke their previous record — set just last week.

Little did I know that my post last week (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) also covered a negative record-breaker.

The news actually got worse from there, Media Bistro's Chris Ariens separately reported:

And not a good sign from the younger viewer department -- none of the shows broke the 2 million viewer average in the A25-54 demo. That's the first time that's ever happened.

I don't find the contention by the AP's Bauder about the "slow news period of late August" very convincing. Political campaigns are already heating up, and family vacation season was mostly over, as the large majority of children were back in school last week. The networks' collective performance was down almost 8% from a year ago for all viewers, and over 14% in the 25-54 demo.

I think it's more likely that more and more viewers and news consumers are tuning out because they agree with this sentiment.

It will be interesting to see what if any kind of fall recovery there will be at the Big 3 networks' evening newscasts.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.