Lester Holt has done a really great job of holding NBC Nightly News together ever since Brian Williams was forced from his anchor seat in early February. It has been widely reported that not only has Holt managed to hold on to NBC's winning spot in the evening news battle, but he has also helped to boost ratings as well. A few questions have been raised, though, about whether or not the network is being a little bit shady in its tactics to hold on to that lead. According to various sources, NBC has begun airing NBC Nightly News a second time after its original 6:30 p.m. broadcast. The re-airing overnight, and the numbers it pulls in are applied to the overall total.
After NBC affiliates in Cleveland, St. Louis, Portland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver, Charlotte, Buffalo and Knoxville showed the Holt-anchored broadcast in its entirety early in the morning, it added 70,000 extra viewers for the first week of March. In that week, NBC had an 11,000-viewer lead over ABC's World News Tonight. That means that without the second broadcast, ABC actually would have won the top spot for the first time in nearly five years.
What has also raised some eyebrows is the fact that NBC is not mentioning that second airing anywhere in the trade publications. Since honesty is one of the biggest issues at the core of all of NBC's problems right now, it kind of seems like maybe it should mention it somewhere, doesn't it?
What are your thoughts on a rebroadcast to pull in better numbers? It is not something that has ever been discouraged, so is the network guilty of trying to pad its ratings lead, or is it simply a new idea that is working and perhaps the other network's should consider doing the same thing?
As for Holt, do you think he will eventually be named as the permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News, or will the new chief of the news division, Andy Lack, work some magic in order to get Williams back behind the anchor desk? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
