David Muir has something to crack a wry smile about this morning. Brian Williams‘ grin is likely a little more tempered.
“ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” has officially won 2014’s third quarter in the key 25-54 demo, averaging 1.955 million viewers. “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” was second with 1.845 million. The latter stat was good enough (or bad enough, really) to mark the lowest quarter ever — since at least 1991, when electronic records began — for “Nightly.”
That said, you don’t have to trace back too far to find the broadcast news program’s prior low: It was Q2 of this year. Plus, the ranking was flip-flopped in total viewers as per usual, with NBC earning 7.918 million to ABC’s 7.612 million.
See video: ABC News’ David Muir Reveals Biggest Inspirations on Kimmel: Peter Jennings Was James Bond of News
And then there’s the fact that NBC’s “Nightly News” still won the entire season in both total viewers and the key demo. So it’s not all negative at NBC News.
But the ABC arm is quite pleased with the demo results over the past six months — which have made up the newscast’s first back-to-back quarter wins in nearly seven years.
Per both metrics, “CBS Evening News” finished third over the most recently measured three-month period, per Nielsen data.
Also read: ABC ‘World News Tonight’ Maintains Ratings Dominance with New Anchor David Muir
At this point, “World News” has won seven straight weeks in the news demographic, and 11 of past 12. The last three weeks have been anchored by Muir, who took over for Diane Sawyer during Q3.
Over the time period, “World News” experienced the largest growth in both the key demo and total viewers year-over-year of the competition, the network touted in a Tuesday press release.