In the final days of 2004, ABC News’ Peter Jennings made a run at NBC’s new star, Brian Williams, but NBCNightly News remained viewers’ top choice.
As news of the South Asian tsunamis streamed in during the week of Dec. 27 to Dec. 30, Williams’ NBC Nightly News reigned as the most-watched network newscast, beating out both ABC’sWorld News Tonight and TheCBS Evening News.
During the New Year’s week, however, Jennings’ World News Tonight was in the hunt, trailing Nightly News by 856,000 viewers, 11.24 million for NBC vs. 10.4 million for ABC.
It was World News Tonight’s highest viewer total since last February. CBS’ Evening News attracted 8.41 million viewers. Nightly News has been tops in total viewers for the past 26 weeks and for 91 of the last 97.
Last week, ABC tied NBC in the key 24-54 news demo, however, with both newscasts registering 3.81 million adults.
