Politics Blog

Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News Hits All-Time Low Ratings

According to Nielsen ratings, for the week of 5/21/07, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric averaged under 6 million viewers for the first time, pulling in 5,960,000.  ABC led the way with 7,780,000 viewers, while NBC came in second with 7,190,000.

CBS Evening News With Katie Couric Sets Ratings Record

It’s been a bad week for CBS Evening News, in fact, a horrible week.  These weren’t the kind of records that CBS had planned on breaking when they hired Katie Couric.  CBS Evening News remained in last place of the three in ratings, recording it’s lowest rating since Couric came on board, and drew the smallest audience in many years.  They drew 6.05 million viewers for a 4.3 rating and 9 share, which comes at the all important May sweeps.  CBS, who signed Katie Couric to a multi-year contract only a year ago, worth in the neighborhood of $15 million a year, has to be disappointed. 

Meanwhile, ABC’s World News has overtook NBC’s Nightly News.  ABC had 8.1 million viewers last week (5.7 rating, 12 share) compared to NBC’s Nightly News which drew 7.5 million viewers (5.3 rating, 12 share), .  The victory is the 9th for ABC over NBC in the past 13 weeks.

CBS News Falters In Evening News Ratings Race

The news is in and it’s not good for CBS.  After being a hit out of the gates, the Katie Couric experiment is now turning into a monumental flop.  In the latest ratings race for the evening news, ABC took first with a 6.4 rating and a 12 share, NBC is the runner-up with 6.2 rating and a 12 share, while CBS with Couric continues to fade in the basement with a distant last place rating of 4.5 and a 9 share.