Broadcast news is facing an existential dilemma as fewer people watch lucrative morning shows

NBC News

As one veteran TV news executive put it to NBC News' Dylan Byers, "there is no NBC News without Today. There is no ABC News without GMA." Yet both shows are losing viewers. Today, for instance brought in $408 million in advertising revenue in 2019 compared to $146 million for NBC Nightly News and $26 million for Meet the Press. "Financially, broadcast news is in an existential dilemma," says Byers. "Morning shows, the profit centers for each network news division, are losing hundreds of thousands of viewers every year. Viewership among 25- to 54-year-olds, the demographic group advertisers covet, is roughly half what it was a decade ago, according to data from Nielsen, the media tracking company...News networks have survived this decline by charging advertisers more money to reach fewer viewers, a standard strategy across television and a life raft for media companies while they build out their streaming networks. But at some point, several television executives acknowledged, the big advertisers will likely decide it's not worth it to pay higher and higher costs to reach fewer and fewer viewers."