Dateline, NBC’s one-hour news magazine, has been renewed for a seventh season in syndication on the NBC Owned Television Stations, Sean O’Boyle, executive president of syndication sales, NBCUniversal Syndication Studios, said Thursday.
Besides NBC, NBCU’s repackaged version of Dateline currently airs weekdays on stations from such broadcast groups as Tegna, Fox, Gray, Cox Media Group, Scripps, Nexstar, Hearst, Sinclair, Sunbeam, Graham Media, Weigel, Block, Hubbard and more.
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“When we first launched Dateline in syndication six years ago, it was primarily scheduled as a utility program on various types of stations airing in a wide variety of time periods but this has evolved,” O’Boyle said in a statement. “Dateline is now a proven success in syndication and has become a key program airing in daytime on mostly traditional affiliated broadcast stations.”
“Dateline is best in class in the true-crime genre with riveting storytelling and high-quality production,” Therese Gamba, chief marketing officer and executive vice president of acquired programming, NBCUniversal Local, said, also in a statement. “Dateline is a natural fit with our NBC brand and has performed well with our daytime audiences.”
In the week ended January 15, Dateline in weekday syndication averaged 1.6 million daily viewers and a 1.2 live plus same day national household rating, according to Nielsen.
In its 31st season, Dateline NBC is the longest-running primetime series in NBC’s history. The show is anchored by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and features correspondents Andrea Canning, Josh Mankiewicz, Keith Morrison and Dennis Murphy. Airing Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, Dateline also airs on cable and streams on Peacock’s Dateline 24/7 channel.■
