By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --CBS chose the middle of the summer for Norah O’Donnell to debut as “CBS Evening News” anchor, so probably should not be surprised that not too many people noticed.
The Nielsen company said that 5.24 million people watched her newscast each day on average last week. That’s essentially unchanged from the week before, when Jim Axelrod was the substitute host and CBS was also a distant third in the ratings behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News.”
Statistics being statistics, there are different ways you could look at O’Donnell’s performance. CBS says the numbers are trending up ever-so-slightly from the previous month.
Yet compared to the same week a year ago, CBS was down 5 percent in viewers and even more sharply among viewers aged 25-to-54, the age group upon which most advertising sales for news programming are based. Year-to-year, NBC is also down 5 percent and ABC is up 1 percent.
CBS News President Susan Zirinsky said the focus is on delivering journalism that impacts viewers, and pointed to interviews last week with top military commanders in the Middle East and O’Donnell’s reporting from the Texas-Mexico border. She also anchored from Florida on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.
“Judging numbers after only one week is meaningless,” Zirinsky said.
No matter how you look at the numbers, O’Donnell has her work cut out for her. ABC’s “World News Tonight” averaged 7.9 million viewers last week and the “NBC Nightly News” had 6.9 million viewers.
Behind the dominant “America’s Got Talent,” NBC won the week in primetime, averaging 3.4 million viewers. ABC had 3.2 million, CBS had 2.9 million, Fox had 1.8 million, ION Television had 1.5 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million, Univision had 1.1 million and the CW had 670,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.48 million viewers in primetime. MSNBC had 1.61 million, HGTV had 1.26 million, Hallmark had 1.19 million and TBS had 1.13 million.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for July 15-21. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, 9.54 million.
2. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.58 million.
3. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 6.48 million.
4. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 5.52 million.
5. “Bring the Funny,” NBC, 4.72 million.
6. “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 4.64 million.
7. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 4.54 million.
8. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 4.27 million.
9. “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 4.16 million.
10. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Wednesday), Fox News, 4.03 million.
11. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 4.01 million.
12. “Lion King: Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” ABC, 4 million.
13. “Press Your Luck,” ABC, 3.9 million.
14. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 3.81 million.
15. “Dateline NBC” (Monday), NBC, 3.75 million.
16. “Hannity” (Wednesday), Fox News, 3.69 million.
17. “To Tell the Truth,” ABC, 3.57 million.
18. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 3.49 million.
19. “Bull,” CBS, 3.41 million.
20. “Hannity” (Thursday), Fox News, 3.35 million.
ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.; CBS is a division of CBS Corp.; Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox; NBC is owned by NBC Universal.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More