Even as NBC News is battling bad headlines about Megyn Kelly, the broadcaster is getting slammed for using fuzzy ratings math.
The Peacock Network seems so desperate to beat rival ABC’s “World News Tonight,” it made the rare choice to change the name of its evening newscast to “Nitely News” every night last week to take advantage of a Nielsen loophole and tighten the cut-throat ratings war.
Changing the name allowed the entire week’s low-rated numbers to not count in the programming’s season average, in “Nightly News” narrowing the gap between the size of its audience with “World News Tonight.”
An NBC News official argued that the network changed the name for the entire week because the NHL Stanley Cup Finals were airing Monday and Thursday.
NBC also noted that ABC changed the title of its newscast “World News Tonight” to “Wrld News Tnt,” on Friday and Wednesday due to the NBA finals.
“Due to sports, all three evening newscasts would have been rated on the same day only once last week: Tuesday evening,” an NBC spokesman said. “One head-to-head night does not accurately reflect an entire week of ratings, so ‘Nightly News’ was retitled for the full week.”
Historically, networks have retitled when there is coverage disruption, including holidays and sports preemptions. However, “Nightly News” has begun to take out low-rated nights even when their newscast is still being seen by the entire country, like it was last Monday and Thursday.
