Syracuse native David Muir has won the TV ratings season again with a new, historic feat.
According to Nielsen Media Research, ABC News’ “World News Tonight with David Muir” spent 31 weeks in the 2021-2022 season as the No. 1 program of the week in total viewers on all of broadcast and cable, excluding sports — a first for a newscast. Muir’s show averaged 8.145 million total viewers, more than top-rated series like “Yellowstone” (2.8 million) and “This Is Us” (2 million), and was the No. 1 program across all of television for 17 weeks.
“World News Tonight” was the most-watched evening newscast for the sixth year in a row and No. 1 in all key target demographics for the third straight year with 1.470 million adults ages 25-54 and 1.008 million adults ages 18-49. The ABC newscast even won the 25-54 demo during both weeks of the 2022 Winter Olympics, hosted by NBC, and won 51 of 52 weeks of the season in total viewers.
“NBC Nightly News,” anchored by Lester Holt, was second among evening newscasts with 6.874 million total viewers and 1.198 million adults ages 25-54 for the 2021-22 season. NBC previously dominated the TV ratings battle for more than a decade, leading by more than 1 million total viewers in the 2013-14 season when Brian Williams anchored the evening news and Diane Sawyer sat at ABC’s desk, but Muir brought the margin down to just 370,000 in his first year as anchor from 2014 to 2015.
“CBS Evening News,” anchored by Norah O’Donnell, was a distant third this season with 4.938 million total viewers and just 833,000 adults ages 25-54.
Muir has continually set himself apart from the competition with coverage of breaking news and on-site reports from places like Ukraine, Buffalo, Uvalde and London. He was also the first American anchor to report from Madagascar as the African country faced a climate-induced famine, raising nearly $5 million for the World Food Programme.
This provided collection of photos shows Syracuse native David Muir on ABC's "World News Tonight" during the 2021-2022 television season.
Muir, a former reporter at Syracuse’s WTVH (now part of CNY Central), is a graduate of Onondaga Central High School and Ithaca College. He was the commencement speaker at Syracuse University in May.
“I’m no different from the intern in Syracuse who then became the rookie reporter in Syracuse,” Muir told syracuse.com in 2016. “I think the sensibilities of having grown up in Upstate New York and the concerns, the fears, the hopes of the people there are reflected all over the country. And that still drives me to this day.”