Pew: Local TV News Bounces Back

Bucking a long-range trend of declining viewership, the audience for local TV news grew in all three major time slots in 2013.  Viewership climbed 6% in the morning (5 to 7 a.m.) and 3% in the early evening (5 to 7 p.m.) newscasts, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. The audience barely edged up—by .1%—in the late night slot (11 p.m.), a newscast that had suffered the biggest decreases in recent years.

The good news comes after a difficult 2012 when late night and early evening audiences each dropped by 7% and the morning audience decreased by 5%. Indeed, viewership for all three slots had declined every year from 2008-2012—with the exception of a small uptick in 2011. Pew Research analyzes Nielsen Media Research audience data for all four major sweeps periods — February, May, July and November — and computes national averages for each time slot.

The jump in viewership in the  key timeslots was due largely to significant increases in the November sweeps period when morning news was up 12%, early evening grew by 8% and late night increased by 6%. While it is impossible to know whether the 2013 numbers are a harbinger of a new spurt of audience growth, they coincide with a wave of consolidation that has seen bullish media companies—from Gannett to Tribune—buy up large groups of stations.

One likely reason for the 2013 audience growth was the number of major news events that broke during the sweeps periods.

Read More Now