Katie Couric and the "CBS Evening News" team did some striking work during a two-day trip to Afghanistan last week, only to see record-setting low ratings in return.
The Nielsen ratings have to be discouraging to news organizations considering expensive assignments in a tough economy. The broadcast's executive producer, Rick Kaplan, said he made "no apologies" for traveling to the war zone, because of the importance of the story.
The CBS newscast averaged 4.89 million viewers last week, the lowest for evening newscasts in the nearly 20 years in which compatible Nielsen records exist and most likely the lowest for at least a couple of decades before that into the early days of television.
CBS knew that going to Afghanistan wasn't going to be an audience-grabber, Kaplan said. But he said he believed his ABC and NBC rivals would do the same story under similar circumstances. While the viewership figures are low in the context of network evening newscasts, they still exceed most cable news programs.
In prime-time last week, the return of quarterback Brett Favre helped push a Minnesota Vikings exhibition football game to the top of the ratings.
For the week, CBS led with an average prime-time viewership of 6.1 million. NBC was second with a 5.7 million average, ABC had 5 million, Fox had 4.6 million, ION Television had 1.2 million and the CW had 1.1 million.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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