Viewers are abandoning Boston TV news at an alarming rate, ratings comparisons show, forcing five stations to compete for a shrinking audience.
Over the past seven years, overall viewership has dropped by more than 140,000 people, ratings show.
At New England Cable News, for example, just 1,221 viewers in the all-important 25 to 54-year-old demographic tuned in last month on average to the station’s noon news. NECN declined comment.
The numbers tell the story.
In the critical May sweeps, WCVB-TV (Channel 5) averaged 103,687 viewers at 11 p.m., WBZ-TV (Channel 4) had 93,221, WHDH-TV (Channel 7) 38,485 and Boston 25 News recorded 38,179 viewers. Newcomer “NBC Boston” had 36,264, ratings show.
In 2010, the 11 p.m. news on WCVB drew a whopping 146,000 total viewers, followed by WBZ’s 122,000, WHDH’s 107,000 and FOX 25 — now Boston 25 News — had 75,000 viewers.
“Whenever you introduce some more choices, you scatter people to the wind. There was a time when you had three channels and people would aggregate to those three channels, ” said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute. “When you add newscasts, you predictably eat away at the core audiences of what you used to have.”
People are getting their news from websites, social media and Amazon’s red-hot digital assistant Alexa, Tompkins added.
“It’s every place and everything that you can go to get information. It’s on your watch. It’s on your phone. It’s on your laptop. It’s on your iPad. It’s everywhere,” he said.
NBC execs took a huge gamble in January when it debuted “NBC Boston” after landing its network affiliation from WHDH in a bruising battle.
It’s a gamble that hasn’t paid off. Nearly all of NBC Boston’s newscasts have come in last — or second to last — every month since its launch. June is looking like more of the same.
NBC also declined to comment.
Still, Boston viewers are finding the peacock network’s new Boston home as droves are tuning into the “Today” show and “NBC Nightly News.” In May, “Today” was No. 1 among 25- to 54-year-old viewers and “NBC Nightly News” was second, ratings show.
They’re just not watching the NBC Boston newscast.
Channel 7 had taken a hit since losing the NBC affiliation. Without NBC’s programs, the station has cranked up live news to 12.5 hours every day, but it lost viewers during almost every newscast from May of last year to this past May.
During May 2016, Channel 7 had 94,000 total viewers at 11 p.m. but the station lost more than half its audience when viewers plummeted to 38,485 last month. Viewers in the moneymaking 25- to 54-year-old demo, meanwhile, fell from 38,000 to 10,235.
Channel 7 Vice President and General Manager Paul Magnes said the station gained viewers when it added newscasts at 9 and 10 p.m.
“We are really happy with our ratings,” Magnes said. “We’re exceeding our expectations. Our advertisers are really happy with our product.”
The challenging media landscape isn’t just impacting TV news, of course. Newspaper print circulation — including here in Boston — has experienced substantial drops.
There is a bit of bright news. Since “Fox 25” branded itself “Boston 25 News,” some of the station’s newscasts saw an uptick in viewers last month.
Boston 25 News director Mike Oliveira said: “While I think it’s too early to tell what the ultimate impact of the branding shift will be, we’re encouraged about the response and the ratings that have followed.”