ABC’s David Muir Wins Nightly News Battle for 9th Straight Year — As NBC’s Tom Llamas Shows Gains in Demo

(ABC/Heidi Gutman)

Another year, another victory for David Muir and ABC’s World News Tonight.

WNT closed 2026 by winning the news ratings battle for a ninth consecutive year, according to Nielsen data. The win was also the sixth straight year that Muir beat NBC and CBS when it comes to total viewers and the coveted 25-54 and 18-49 age demos.

At the same time, Tom Llamas appears to be finding his footing as the new host of NBC Nightly News, with The Peacock Network enjoying some momentum heading into 2026. More on that in a moment.

First, here is a look at how the nightly news casts stacked up this year, per Nielsen:

World News Tonight: 7.84 million total viewers, 718,000 (18-49), 1.01 million (25-54)

NBC Nightly News: 6.20 million total viewers, 573,000 (18-49), 837,000 (25-54)

CBS Evening News: 4.05 million total viewers, 355,000 (18-49), 508,000 (25-54)

Another point that has ABC feeling good: it was WNT’s biggest win in total viewers over Nightly News in 30 years.

ABC’s Good Morning America was also the top-ranked morning newscast (2.77 million viewers) for the 14th straight year, beating CBS Mornings (1.96 million) and edging past NBC’s Today (2.75 million) by a hair; Today won the 25-54 demo with 586,000 viewers.

The good news for NBC is that Llamas — who replaced veteran host Lester Holt in June — had a good end to the year.

Nightly News was the only newscast among the three networks to increase total viewers from the third quarter to the fourth quarter — adding 477,000 total viewers; that put the show at 6.20 million viewers for the quarter — solidifying its full-year viewership. Its fourth quarter ratings were slightly up compared to last year — about 20,000 viewers — and it also added 89,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo from Q3 to Q4.

CBS, meanwhile, is turning to CBS Mornings co-anchor Tony Dokoupil to be its new anchor of CBS Evening News in January. The move was spearheaded by new CBS News boss Bari Weiss, who has had an eventful week already. It’ll be worth seeing if Dokoupil can close the gap on Muir and Llamas next year.