The audience for the three broadcast networks’ evening news shows, long in decline, is suddenly showing some life.
NBC, ABC and CBS each clocked their biggest audiences in five years for the 12 months ended April 30, Nielsen ratings show.
On CBS, Scott Pelley’s “Evening News” grew the most, adding 15 percent more viewers over the period, to 6.65 million viewers in the latest year.
The audience for Brian Williams’ “Nightly News” on NBC, the ratings leader, and ABC’s “World News” with Diane Sawyer, were also up, but by much smaller amounts.
News-industry analyst Andrew Tyndall said the turnaround in audience size after roughly 30 years of slow decline could be the result of “cord-cutting and people returning to broadcast.”
Tyndall said the phenomenon is helping boost morning broadcast news numbers, too.
“All three newscasts are at their highest levels over the last 12 months in at least five years,” Horizon research director Brad Adgate added.
“With all the news available on cable, online and local TV, that’s a noteworthy achievement.”
To be sure, in the sweet spot of demographics, the 25-to-54- year-old, all three networks lost ground over the same period.
Into this shifting sand, CBS News on Monday announced in a staff memo that seasoned heavyweight Steve Capus, the former NBC News president, was hired as its executive editor, a new position.
In the role, Capus will serve as executive producer of Pelley’s “CBS Evening News” and oversee all CBS News programs except for “60 Minutes.”
Capus reports to CBS News President David Rhodes and CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager.
The new position will place Capus immediately in an awkward mano a mano faceoff with his pal Brian Williams with whom he worked side by side for eight years trying to beat the rating pants off CBS and ABC.
Now Capus will have the knives out to cut Williams’ ratings down.
“We joke about who gets to call themselves the “Phillies” and who is the “Yankees,” Capus, a Philly native, said of his past chats with the NBC News host.
Capus exited NBC News in February 2013.
Capus has been watching Pelley’s CBS broadcast closely for the past few weeks and admires Clarissa Ward’s reporting from the Ukraine and described the broadcast as one defined by a harder edge.
Ward was tipped by New York magazine as a replacement for Lara Logan, who is on leave from “60 Minutes.”
“I get to go back to doing what I love, which is producing a live broadcast and being in the control room,” said Capus. “I think there’s a hunger in the younger demos for a serious-minded news broadcast.”
Speculation has already begun about whether the Capus appointment positions him to eventually move up the corporate ladder.
CBS has denied such talk.
“On first blush it could be seen as a demotion, but on the other hand he was always an EP at heart and it was his true love,” Tyndall said. “Either he’s going back to what he likes or they’re lining him up for something else.”