With Brian Williams In Cairo, NBC Nightly News Hits Six-Year Ratings High
The uprising in Egypt forced an airlift of American news anchors to Cairo, but NBC’s Brian Williams outperformed his counterparts in terms of ratings, hitting a six-year high for his NBC Nightly News for the week ending February 5. Nightly averaged more than 11.2 million viewers, the newscast’s best showing since January 2005.
NBC execs point out that the ratings for Nightly were bigger than the viewership of some primetime shows, including ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (11.182 million viewers) and The Bachelor (9.660 million).
Williams anchored the broadcast from Cairo on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and from Amman, Jordan on Thursday.
ABC’s Diane Sawyer, meanwhile, was not in the region, but her ABC World News also hit a longtime ratings high. World News was second among the network evening newscasts with 9.82 million viewers, its largest audience in nearly four years.
Sawyer anchored in New York, with Christiane Amanpour and David Muir leading ABC’s forces in Egypt.
ABC’s decision led The New York Times‘ Alessandra Stanley to question the value of having main anchors on the scene, compared to experienced international correspondents like Amanpour:
The ABC anchor Diane Sawyer stayed in New York and let Ms. Amanpour do what she does best. The NBC anchor Brian Williams had rushed to Cairo, followed by Katie Couric of CBS. They worked hard, but in that volatile setting, the network anchors didn’t have much to do; the best reporting was provided by well-connected veterans like Richard Engel on NBC and Lara Logan of CBS. After pro-Mubarak mobs began going after journalists — Ms. Couric was jostled while trying to report live on Wednesday from Tahrir Square — she and Mr. Williams left the country, quite wisely. On Friday Ms. Couric and Mr. Williams were both back in New York.
At CBS, Katie Couric also traveled to Cairo, and her CBS Evening News placed third overall with 7.35 million viewers, but that also represented a jump for Evening News, with its largest audience since the week ending January 30, 2009 (when the broadcast delivered 7.74 million viewers).
