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Press release – Ratings
February 18, 2026
‘World News Tonight’ Beats NBC by 860,000 Post-Super Bowl LX Week and First Week of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and More Than Doubles Its Lead Over CBS by Nearly 4.5 Million
“World News Tonight with David Muir” ranked as the No. 1 newscast in all of broadcast and cable in Total Viewers (8.657 million) during the week of Feb. 9, 2026, based on Live+Same Day Big Data Plus Panel Program Ratings from Nielsen Media Research. “World News Tonight” beat “NBC Nightly News” (7.797 million) by 860,000 post-Super Bowl LX Week and during the first week of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
NOTE: On Friday (2/13/26), “CBS Evening News” was retitled to “CBS Evening Nws.” The retitled telecasts are excluded from the weekly and season averages. “CBS Evening News” weekly averages are based on four days (Monday-Thursday).
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” airs 6:30-7:00 p.m. ET on ABC. Chris Dinan is the executive producer of the broadcast.
EVENING NEWS (Week of Feb. 9, 2026)
Source: Nielsen, NTI Total Viewers, Adults 25-54 and Adults 18-49 National Live + Same Day Big Data Plus Panel Program Ratings. Current Week (w/o 2/9/26), Previous Week (w/o 2/2/26) and Year-Ago Week (w/o 2/3/25). Season to date: Most Current Data Stream: 2025-2026 Season (9/22/25 – 2/15/26) and 2024-2025 Season (9/23/24 – 2/16/25). Week 1 of 2024 Summer Olympics (w/o 7/29/24) and Week 1 of 2022 Winter Olympics (w/o 2/7/22). Beginning 12/26/22, averages are based on Big Data Plus Panel ratings. Season averages based on Big Data Plus Panel ratings start with the 2023-2024 season. Beginning 9/29/25, “World News Tonight” averages include airings on ABCNL. Nielsen ratings for ABC, NBC and CBS include additional airings in select markets. Beginning 8/31/20, national ratings also include Out of Home (OOH) viewing.
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