Both the “Today’’ show and Williams’s newscast have increased already substantial leads in the ratings over second-place broadcasts on ABC News since each of those competitors switched anchors in December.
Five years in, competing with ABC’s Diane Sawyer and CBS’s Katie Couric, Williams is now the dean of evening news anchors.
“Having turned 50 this year, I suddenly woke up and I’m in the demographic that my parents were in when they were in the prime of watching an evening newscast,’’ Williams said.
The stiff air of formality that characterized his early days replacing Tom Brokaw is gone now, and viewers are responding. The weeks that he slipped behind ABC’s Charles Gibson in the ratings seem a distant memory, too. “Nightly News’’ averaged more than 10 million viewers each week last month, and the show’s 11 percent margin over ABC before Sawyer took over swelled to 16 percent once she became anchor.
Williams is comfortable in his skin, and NBC has constructed a newscast around his strengths, said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies the content of evening newscasts.
The third segment in the newscast is all Williams, with the type of quirky stories he loves: a new Heinz ketchup packet; a freak shark attack on a surfer; the demolition of Giants Stadium. In response to viewer e-mails, “Nightly News’’ has emphasized more of its positive “Making a Difference’’ segments.
Williams said he believes his viewers are confident when they tune in that they will be getting a broadcast without a lot of yelling and screaming, or advancing of agendas. “It’s as straight down the middle as they come and we struggle mightily to do that each day,’’ he said.
One of Tyndall’s writer friends is constantly exasperated by Williams’s style of “backing in’’ to hard news stories. But Tyndall said it suits Williams.
“He doesn’t hype every story and make it a matter of life and death,’’ Tyndall said. “It’s really a comfortable way to watch the news.’’
The news division is looking increasingly like an island at NBC. It is successful financially and in finding an audience.
The situation at NBC is an odd polar opposite to CBS, where prime-time entertainment is thriving and the news division struggling.
