Is Viewership Down Due To Crappy News Or Lack Of Interest In News Itself? We Believe It Is The Latter.

Network News Viewership Reaches All-Time Low The share of Americans who say they regularly watch network nightly news has fallen to just 27 percent, down from 60 percent in 1993, the earliest year for which figures are available from the Pew Research Center. Young people are by far the least likely to regularly watch network news — just 11 percent of those 18 to 29 years old watch, down from 46 percent in 1993. Nearly half (49 percent) say they never watch network nightly news. Americans aged 65 and up are more likely to watch, but regular viewership in this demographic has fallen to 40 percent, down from 75 percent in 1993, according to Pew Research surveys. "Television remains the public's top daily news source, but the audience for network TV news has steadily declined over the years as people have migrated to other places for news, namely cable TV and digital sources," Pew observed. In total viewers, the number of Americans who watch a nightly newscast on ABC, CBS, or NBC each evening has fallen from 48 million in 1985 to 24.5 million last year, according to a Pew analysis of data from Nielsen Media Research. In an illustration of the waning popularity of nightly network news, when Pew conducted an online survey, just 27 percent of respondents shown a photo of Brian Williams could correctly identify the anchor of the top-rated "NBC Nightly News." Three percent said he was former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, and 2 percent said he was Vice President Joe Biden. In contrast, in a 1985 survey by Times Mirror/Gallup, 47 percent of respondents could correctly identify a photo of Dan Rather, who was then anchor of CBS' top-rated evening news program. In the new survey, only 15 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 correctly identified Williams, compared to 41 percent who named Rather in the 1985 survey. As the Insider Report noted in December, experts are predicting that TV's share of global advertising is likely to fall in coming years, with digital media chipping away at television's dominance