NBC NIGHTLY NEWS Averages 11 Million Total Viewers

"NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" continued as America's most-watched network evening newscast for the week ending February 8, 2014, according to Nielsen Media Research data. In a week that began with severe weather and ended with Brian Williams anchoring from Sochi, Russia during the start of the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Nightly averaged nearly 11 million total viewers, topping ABC by 1.5 million.

This marks Nightly's best total viewer delivery since the week of January 31, 2011 (uprising in Cairo), biggest total viewer gap over ABC since the week of December 2, 2013, and best lead over CBS in four weeks. The NBC broadcast beat ABC by over 1 million viewers every night of the week, including an advantage of 2.3 million total viewers on Friday, the night of the Opening Ceremony.

Season-to-date, Nightly is averaging the highest growth among total viewers (+513,000) and has widened its total viewer lead over ABC by +34% year-to-year. Nightly is currently posting its biggest audience (9.350 million) to start a season since the 2005-06 season and its largest advantage over ABC World News (+1,060,000) since the 2010-11 season.

Weekly Highlights:

· Nightly delivered 10.973 million total viewers, +1,482,000 more than ABC World News' 9.491 million and +2,451,000 more than CBS Evening News' 8.522 million.
· Nightly averaged a 7.1/13 Household rating, ahead of ABC's 6.3/11 and CBS' 5.5/10.
· Nightly averaged over 10 million viewers for 3rd consecutive week and has topped ABC by at least one million P2+ viewers in 11 of the last 14 weeks.
· Nightly saw the largest P2+ growth year-to-year (+14%, or +1,366,000) and versus prior week (+5%, or +499,000). O
· n Tuesday, Nightly had its biggest single-day audience (11.479 million) since 1/7/2014.
· Nightly delivered a 2.5 A25-54 rating, +2 tenths ahead of ABC's 2.3 and +6 tenths more than CBS's 1.9 rating.
· This marks Nightly's best A25-54 rating since the week of 4/15/2013 (Boston Marathon bombing and manhunt) and widest gap over ABC in four weeks.
· Nightly was the only broadcast to improve its demo rating week-to-week (+1 tenth) while both ABC and CBS remained flat.
· Among A25-54 (000), Nightly averaged 2.951 million viewers, +188,000 ahead of World News' 2.763 million, and +685,000 ahead of Evening News' 2.266 million.
· This marks Nightly's biggest demo audience since the week of 7/30/2012 (first full week of London Olympics), and best gap over ABC in four weeks (week of 1/6/2014) and over CBS since week of 12/30/2013.

Trends:

· Nightly has won in total viewers for 230 consecutive weeks, and in 277 of the past 278 weeks.
· Nightly has won in viewers A25-54 for 271 of the past 272 weeks.

Patrick Burkey is the executive producer of "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." For more news and information, go to www.nbcnightlynews.com, Facebook.com/NBCNightlyNews, or follow on Twitter @nbcnightlynews.