"NBC Nightly News" is feeling the ratings heat after host Brian Williams' name was officially removed from the show following his suspension.
Since the removal of Williams' name on Wednesday, the ratings for "NBC Nightly News" fell by double digits, according to Nielsen's early statistics,
Deadline Hollywood reported.
On the previous Wednesday, NBC beat "ABC's World News Tonight" by almost 400,000 viewers. Two weeks prior, NBC had 600,000 more viewers than ABC. And on the most recent Wednesday, Feb. 11, the first night Williams' name was missing from the broadcast, ABC beat out NBC by almost 350,000 viewers.
ABC also had 109,000 more viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic. NBC has held this group since the beginning of 2015 — by almost 500,000 viewers on Feb. 4 and by approximately 300,000 two weeks ago.
By Thursday night, the total number of viewers on "NBC Nightly News" fell by more than a million, to 8.570 million from 9.802 million on Monday night.
ABC News had its biggest lead since Williams' suspension Tuesday. CBS News also had its largest number of viewers for the week by Thursday.
According to Deadline Hollywood, these are not the final statistics; those should be released sometime this week.
NBC announced Williams'
suspension without pay Tuesday. Williams reportedly makes $13 million per year.
The decision was made after the NBC anchor said that he had misremembered an event in Iraq in 2003 when he claimed he was in a military helicopter that was struck with a rocket propelled grenade. That tale has led other reports by Williams to be questioned as well.
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