With the suspension of Brian Williams from NBC “Nightly News,” viewers have been abandoning the show in droves.
“’NBC Nightly News’ took a double digit tumble in its first broadcast with Brian Williams name officially stripped from the broadcast, a.k.a Wednesday, according to fast affiliate time period stats issued by Nielsen,” writes our good friend Lisa de Moraes at Deadline.com.
Lisa adds, “This past Thursday night – the second nightly broadcast under Williams’ six-month suspension (which many industry navel-lint gazers believe to be permanent) — ‘Nightly News’ delivered its lowest numbers of the week in total viewers – 8.570 compared to Monday’s 9.802 mil. Nightly also clocked its lowest number of the week in the news demo – 2.128 million versus Monday’s 2.489 mil. Meanwhile, ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ clocked its largest lead of the week in both metrics and trailed ‘Nightly’ by smallest margin in adults 18-49. ‘CBS Evening News’ on Thursday night, sadly probably owing in part to word legendary newsman Bob Simon had died the previous night in a car accident and the expectation the network’s evening newscast would address his death and pay tribute to his legacy. That boost meant CBS’s newscast trailed NBC’s by particularly small margins.”
Final stats for this week will come in next week, Lisa notes.
They finally get an anchor with integrity like Lester Holt and the ratings go down? He should have gotten that job from the beginning. I hope they let him keep it. If they remove him I will no longer watch NBC Nightly News, something I have done for decades, long before Brian Williams. While Brian is certainly likeable, I always thought Lester Holt was far more professional.
Although I greatly admire and respect the integrity of Lester Holt, he is not the “star” that Brian Williams is/was. The question that I have and that no one has yet to bring up is where was NBC’s management when the “conflating” started years ago? Where was the PR apparatus back then? Where was the “reeling in” by NBC News Management?
Nope. In business the highest producers usually get away with things that other workers never would be able to because they produce. Production equals dollars. The trouble with Brian is that he became too much of a “star” and less the news.
Again, where was NBC’s management? Sure there were signs, but home come the story got so far as to have Mr. Williams suspended/fired?
Bring him back. What does NBC News have to lose by doing so? “What a difference a day makes….24 little hours…..”
I think people are abandoning NBC because of what Brian did-not because he’s gone. At least that’s what I hope………Lester deserves the chair.