The three network evening newscasts have been in a downward trend since the days of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. But for the first time since the 2001-02 season, all the three evening newscasts saw an increase in Total Viewers year-over-year.

Compared to the 2009-2010 season during the just completed 2010-11 season:

• NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams is up +2.7%

• ABC World News with Diane Sawyer is up +3.3%

• CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley is up +2.7%

The gain of a combined 637,000 total viewers in the 2010-11 season, followed a loss of 739,000 viewers in the 2009-2010 season; which means, while viewership is up, it’s not at the level it was in 2008-09, which saw the presidential election/inauguration.

NBC and CBS are also up in A25-54 viewers compared to last season: +1.4% for “Nightly News” and +1.7% for “Evening News.” “World News” was flat. Katie Couric anchored the CBS Evening News for the first 8 months of the season with Scott Pelley picking up in June. All three newscasts have also seen Executive Producer changes in the last few months.

Numbers for the 2010-2011 season:

Program	Total Viewers	A25-54 Viewers
	8.79M	2.60M
	7.81M	2.13M
	5.87M	1.77M