Late-Night Newscasts See Big Drop In Viewers

LATE-NIGHT NEWSCASTS SEE BIG DROP IN VIEWERS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: John Maynard]
A precipitous decline in late prime-time viewership took its toll on 11 p.m. weeknight newscasts, according to Nielsen figures for TV's November "sweeps" period that concluded yesterday. In Washington (DC), all three local stations that have network programming after 10 p.m. -- WRC (Channel 4), WJLA (Channel 7), WUSA (Channel 9) -- saw late-newscast viewership plummet by more than 10 percent compared with last year. Total weekday viewers at 11 p.m. fell from 463,000 last November to 382,000 at those stations -- a decline of nearly 20 percent. The stations were hurt in no small part by the sharp decrease in ratings among the network lead-in shows; at 10:45 p.m., local weekday viewership fell by more than 25 percent (from 673,000 to 505,000).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/29/AR2006112901553.html
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