NBCU News Group Saw Average of 134M Monthly Unique Visitors
NBC News NOW Marks Best Year on Record
NBCU News Group Ends 2022 as #4 Podcast Publisher in U.S.
NBCU News Group Leads All News Brands on Emerging Platforms
Jan. 17, 2023 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) ranks as the #1 news organization in the U.S. for 2022, beating all competition. The News Group saw a monthly average of 134 million unique visitors in 2022, ranking as #1 for the second year in a row and beating CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post.
NBCU News Group has ranked #1 for 19 months since becoming a public-facing entity in April 2021 as the leading news brand. NBCU News Group was #1 total video starts and total video viewers for 2022 year to-date.
CNBC Digital recorded an average of 62 million unique visitors in 2022. CNBC.com is the #2 business news site on the internet, ahead of Forbes.com, WSJ.com, CNN Business, Bloomgberg.com, Reuters.com and Marketwatch.com. CNBC Digital is the #2 brand in Business News video with 12.6M monthly video unique viewers in 2022. Additionally, CNBC Make It had its best year ever in 2022 and was also the most-read site across CNBC Digital.
NBCNews.com reached an average of 81 million unique visitors in 2022, ranking ahead of competitors such as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News and Washington Post. The past three years have been NBC News’ three best years on record with monthly unique visitors.
In 2022, MSNBC Digital saw nearly 162 million average monthly video views, pacing as the 2nd strongest year on record behind only 2020 and growing by +29% versus the prior year. In addition, MSNBC Digital text content including MSNBC Daily, The Reidout Blog, Maddow Blog and Know Your Value, drove record levels, up +102% versus 2021.
TODAY Digital averaged 48 million monthly unique visitors in 2022 and ended the year with its strongest month since early 2021. TODAY in 2022 ranked as the third largest individual publisher among leading lifestyle and entertainment brands. TODAY published more content in 2022 than any other year on record, up +12% versus 2021. In 2022 to-date, TODAY Digital also ranked among the top three leading lifestyle and entertainment brands across key video metrics.
NBCU News Group’s streaming services, NBC News NOW and TODAY All Day, both had their best year on record.
NBC News NOW, NBC News’ 24/7 streaming news network, had its strongest year on record, with 10 of its 12 best months ever in 2022. NBC News NOW is up more than 50%+ year-over-year for a second year in a row and marks its third consecutive record year.
In 2022, NBC News NOW launched Meet the Press NOW and NBC News Daily, expanded with both national and international linear distribution and continues to have more live hours than any other streaming news network in the U.S.
TODAY All Day had its best year on record in 2022, up by over +132% vs. 2021. The past four months have been the lifestyle streaming network’s strongest months to-date. Q4 2022 also ranks as TODAY All Day’s best quarter on record.
NBCU News Group ended 2022 as the #4 podcast publisher in the U.S. for the first time, moving ahead of The New York Times, according to Podtrac. It was the News Group’s best listener year on record, with listenership up +29% versus 2021. Plus, the News Group delivered a record 63 million monthly global podcast downloads in 2022, up +24% versus the prior year. December 2022 marked the 16th straight month with more than 50 million downloads.
In 2022, the NBCU News Group launched nine new podcasts, including Tiffany Dover Is Dead*, In Their Court, Born to Rule, Dateline’s The Seduction, Missing in America, Internal Affairs, Murder & Magnolias, as well as MSNBC’s The Revolution with Steve Kornacki and Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra.
NBC News, TODAY and CNBC each had their best year on record with double-digit lifts versus 2021. TODAY podcast downloads were up more than +60% year-over-year, while NBC News downloads grew +28% year-over-year. CNBC also saw significant growth in 2022, growing +36% year-over-year with all Business Day showcasts hitting record levels.
NBCU News Group leads all other news brands across younger emerging platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. On TikTok, the NBCU News Group ranks as #1 in both followers and views, ahead of ABC News, CBS News, The Washington Post and CNN. NBCU News Group saw more than 7.7M followers on TikTok with nearly 3x growth in 2022 vs. 2021 and over 200M video views on TikTok with more than 7x growth vs. 2021.
NBC News and MSNBC are up more than +280% in followers versus the end of 2021. NBC News has seen over 112 million monthly views on TikTok throughout 2022, nearly 6x what it drove in the prior year. MSNBC saw an average of 25 million views monthly, more than 10x what it delivered in 2021.
TODAY Digital on TikTok has grown followers by more than +150% versus 2021 and driven more than 37 million monthly views up over +517% versus 2021.
In 2022, Stay Tuned reached 10 million monthly unique visitors across platforms, with an average of 36 million episode views each month. Stay Tuned’s views on TikTok have also grown significantly, averaging over 23 million monthly views, 16x greater than the 2021 monthly average. Stay Tuned on TikTok is up +55% in followers versus the end of 2021.
CNBC on TikTok had its best year on record in 2022 and grew its followers by 333% versus 2021. CNBC also had its best month ever in views on TikTok in December.
Sources: Comscore Media Metrix® , April 2021 – December 2022, U.S. & Comscore Video Metrix®, April 2021 – November 2022, U.S. desktop internet population 2+ and mobile internet population 13+ years old, Custom-Defined List, Based on NBCU News entity compared to a custom list of brand competitors that are also in the News/Information Category: ABC News, cbsnews.com, cnn.com, foxnews.com, The New York Times Brand, washingtonpost.com. Leading Lifestyle & Entertainment brands based on Custom-Defined List that includes top individual publishers within Lifestyle and Entertainment Category. Business News category excluding network entities. Adobe Analytics & Partner Dashboards, Cross-Platform Global Data, December 2022. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Audience and Global Downloads, December 2022. ListenFirst Media, December 2022. Snapchat Analytics Portal, December 2022.
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For more information, contact:
Claudia Meyer-Samargia
NBC News Digital
Claudia.MeyerSamargia@nbcuni.com
