Perhaps one reason why Big 3 network coverage of the 2008 presidential election was so heavy on fawning favoritism towards Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined with all-out attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin was that the belief that an Obama presidency might revive interest in their declining evening newscasts.
If so, that strategy has spectacularly failed. Nine weeks into Obama's presidency, it's clear that after a short-lived revival, the audiences for NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Charles Gibson, and especially CBS's Katie Couric are smaller than ever, and that (with the exception of NBC's Williams) the remainder who are still tuning in are older than ever.
After a significant post-election rise that peaked during the first full week after Obama's inauguration, the viewership drop at all three networks has been steep, to the point where all three have fewer people tuning in than they did a year ago at this time (source: the Evening News Ratings page at Media Bistro):
From their respective levels during the week of January 26, NBC, ABC, and CBS are down 17%, 15%, and 21%, respectively. As a whole, as seen above, they're off 17.4%. In the coveted 25-54 demo, the decline from January 26 is even worse (off 26%, 19%, and 26%). An astonishing 70% of viewers are not in the 25-54 demo, and it can be safely assumed that the vast majority of those are 55 or over.
It looks like the geniuses at the Big 3 Nets got the worst of both worlds: They've lost even more older viewers, not in small part because of their obviously biased coverage, and they couldn't hold onto younger people who, at least during the election, were disproportionately Obama fans. Too bad, so sad.
We now return to our regularly scheduled evening news show meltdown.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
