NBC star Lester Holt sees ratings
plummet amid fallout from North Korea trip, anti-Trump attitude
NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” has
fallen behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” in the ratings department. (NBC)
In a major embarrassment for NBC anchor Lester Holt, ABC's
“World News Tonight” soundly defeated Holt’s “Nightly News” in the ratings last
week, scoring victories in both the desirable demographic of adults age 25-54
and in total viewers.
“It’s a full scale fiasco. They're in panic mode,” an NBC
insider, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Fox News
about executives at the network.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” beat NBC’s “Nightly News” among the
key demographic last week, snapping the Peacock Network’s 89-week winning
streak among adults age 25-54. ABC’s “World News Tonight” averaged 9 million
total viewers and 1.99 million in the demo, compared to 8.3 million total and
1.91 in the demo for NBC, according to TVNewser.
NBC’s demo loss is the latest setback for powerful NBC News boss
Andy Lack, whose reign has been plagued with controversy in recent
months.
The NBC insider told Fox News that NBC News executives are
scrambling to address the collapse of “Nightly News” and are even debating
whether to beg NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke to restore disgraced host Brian
Williams to the throne. Williams was fired from “Nightly News” in 2015 for
embellishing stories about his war heroics. He has since been
anchoring a late-night broadcast on sister network MSNBC.
NBC’s “Nightly News” also failed to show growth among total
viewers last week and fell 4 percent in the demo compared to the same week last
year, while “World News Tonight” grew its audience by 9 percent in viewers and
11 percent in the demo, according to TVNewser.
The loss deepens the embarrassment stemming from the recent
“Nightly News” historic loss to ABC among total viewers during an Olympics week
-- the first such loss in more than 25 years. NBC’s loss was unprecedented as
the network paid nearly a billion dollars for U.S. broadcast rights to the 2018
Winter Games and typically sees a huge ratings bump for all its programs during
the Olympics.
Lester Holt was in South Korea to
promote NBC’s coverage of the Olympics while rival anchors covered the Parkland
massacre from South Florida. (2018 NBCUniversal Media, LLC)
One possible cause of the loss was that NBC News stumbled badly
last month when it provided anemic
coverage of the tragic Parkland massacre. Holt and all of NBC News’
stars -- except for Megyn Kelly -- were out of place in South Korea to promote
Olympics programming when the shooting took place. But NBC did not send Kelly
to front its coverage of the Florida tragedy, despite the fact that she had
distinguished herself by covering the Sandy Hook killings when she worked at
Fox News. Insiders were puzzled why Kelly -- who makes about $23 million a year
-- was not sent to South
Korea or to Florida. She remained
at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, anchoring her 9 a.m. hour of “Today."
Holt has endured a somewhat rough 18 months since he
moderated the first presidential debate between Trump and
Hillary Clinton to much opprobrium. The Hill wrote that NBC
News’ biggest star left the event “bruised and partisan” for
appearing biased in favor of Clinton.
When asked if Holt’s job was in danger, an NBC spokesperson
provided the following comment: “Not a single story you’ve written about the
internal workings of NBC News has been accurate, and neither is this one."
And while Holt was panned
for his performance at the debate, many industry insiders blame
executives for the majority of NBC News’ troubles, as opposed to solely pinning
the blame on the famously hard-working “Nightly News” anchor.
Lack and his top deputy, embattled NBC News President Noah
Oppenheim, have yet to be transparent over why they spiked celebrity scion
Ronan Farrow’s explosive reporting on Harvey Weinstein, which Farrow
took to the New Yorker magazine.
In various media appearances to promote his Weinstein reporting,
Farrow took a series of jabs at
NBC News for refusing to air his Weinstein reporting, implying that Lack and
Oppenheim had maintained a “veil of silence.”
Ronan Farrow has criticized NBC
News for refusing to run his reporting that would have uncovered Harvey
Weinstein as a sexual predator months before the disgraced Hollywood mogul was
exposed.
Oppenheim -- who moonlights as a Hollywood screenwriter --
personally oversaw Holt’s controversial reporting trip to
North Korea in February during which the duo was accused of
being duped by regime propagandists. Holt anchored from a bustling ski resort
that Western media had previously widely covered as being empty and deserted.
Presumably, the dictatorial
regime filled the resort for Holt’s standups, something the NBC star
failed to note on his broadcast. Oppenheim was the senior executive on the
ground in North Korea for the broadcast. Fox News reported that Lack, furious
about the botched trip and a ballooning Megyn Kelly scandal back home, recalled
Oppenheim early to New York.
And the NBC News bosses have yet to explain why they sat on the
now infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of Trump making lewd comments about women.
The tape was eventually leaked to The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold, who
is Oppenheim's friend from prestigious Harvard University, where the men
were editors together at the storied Crimson student newspaper. Oppenheim is
also close friends from Harvard with Hillary Clinton’s son in law, Marc
Mezvinsky, and the men are believed to have participated in each other’s
nuptial ceremonies.
NBC News chairman Andy Lack
oversees a department that is “in panic mode,” an NBC insider told Fox News.
It remains unclear why NBC didn’t publish the “Access
Hollywood" tape before it was leaked to Fahrenthold. The anti-Trump
reporter was recently named a paid NBC News contributor.
Furthermore, Lack has not been transparent about
the events that led up to the sudden firing of his close friend, Matt
Lauer, for sexual misconduct in November at the height of the #MeToo movement.
NBCUniversal claims to be investigating internally to determine who knew what
about Lauer’s pervy acts, but the company has not
announced anything regarding its findings.
NBCUniversal did not respond to a request for an update
regarding the internal investigation.
Brian Flood covers the media for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter
at @briansflood.
