NBC News NOW and TODAY All Day Have Record Viewership Years in 2021
NBCU News Group Has Top Year On Record for Podcasts and Audio
NBCU News Group Continues Digital Expansion with more than 150 New Hires in 2021
December 14, 2021 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) saw an average of 141 million unique visitors since April 2021, ranking as the #1 news organization in the U.S. for six out of the last eight months, beating CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post.
NBCU News Group saw 142 million unique visitors in November. NBCU News Group was also #1 in total video minutes watched and total video starts in the month of October with 402 million views and 1.9 billion minutes watched, holding that #1 spot for 6 months in a row (7th month in a row for minutes watched, since becoming a public facing entity).
CNBC Digital is the #1 non-portal brand in Business News for unique visitors, both for the year and the month of November. CNBC Digital also ranked #1 in Business News video for the year, with an average of 17 million unique video viewers, as well as 17.5 million unique video viewers in October, holding the top position for 10 consecutive months. Plus, in November, CNBC.com was named the Best Business/Finance Website by the Editor & Publisher Awards.
CNBC Make It, which reached a record number of unique visitors for the year, up 31% from 2020, debuted Paycheck to Paycheck, a series that follows workers with the same job across the U.S. and finds out how much they earn, how they got to their salary and their best negotiating tips. Plus, CNBC Pro more than doubled subscribers year-over-year in 2021 and November was CNBC Pro’s second best month on record for new subscribers.
MSNBC Digital had their strongest year on record, with unique visitors up 11% year-to-date vs. the same months last year, seeing increased audiences on platforms such as Apple News. Plus, MSNBC Daily had one of its strongest months on record. In 2021, MSNBC text drove more monthly page views than any other year on record with new initiatives such as MSNBC Daily and the Reidout Blog. MSNBC video time spent per viewer ranked ahead of CNN.com for the 8th month in a row.
TODAY Digital has also had its strongest year on record, reaching more than 50 million unique visitors for 10 of the last 11 months, growing by nearly 10% year-to-date and experiencing its third year in a row of growth in monthly unique visitors. TODAY also continues to rank, as it has throughout all of 2021, among the top 10 entities in the Lifestyle category for video views and minutes, and ranks among the top 5 entities for video viewers (October 2021).
NBCU News Group’s streaming networks, TODAY All Day and NBC News NOW, hit record viewership in 2021, with NBC News NOW seeing a monthly average of nearly 60 million video views and more than 20 million hours watched, up +44% year-to-date in 2021 vs 2020. It was the streaming platform’s best year ever. TODAY All Day’s viewership is also up +189% year-to-date in 2021 vs. 2020.
NBC News NOW launched its second primetime streaming program “Hallie Jackson NOW” in November. The time slot increased by double-digits during premiere week and full episode views across platforms continue to see strong consumption. In a constantly changing news cycle, Hallie Jackson NOW brings viewers the most important national, culture, technology, international and business stories of the day and utilizes the full breadth of NBC News reporters and correspondents to deliver a fast-paced broadcast with a high story count, as well as deep dives into stories from across the country and around the world.
The launch of “Hallie Jackson NOW” is one of four programs launched on NBC News NOW in 2021, alongside NBC News NOW Live with Morgan Radford and Aaron Gilchrist, Top Story with Tom Llamas and NOW Tonight with Joshua Johnson.
Also in November, NBC News NOW presented special coverage of the 2021 gubernatorial, state-level and local mayoral elections with the primetime program “Meet the Press: Election Night Special,” hosted by Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker. The day was NBC News NOW’s strongest day in recent months, up over 20% vs. recent levels. It was also NBC News NOW’s strongest day on YouTube since April.
TODAY All Day saw its best month on record in November and the past 3 months have been the lifestyle streaming network’s strongest months to-date after launching last summer.
In addition, TODAY All Day streamed “Peacock Presents: Holiday Steals & Deals,” a shoppable hour-long special hosted by TODAY Lifestyle and Commerce Contributor Jill Martin, who shared the ultimate holiday wishlist. The program drove one of TODAY All Day’s top three days on record, up more than +40% versus the average day.
NBCU News Group had its top listener year on record, continuing to rank in the top ten of all podcast publishers in the US, up +18% versus 2020. It was also the News Group’s best year on record for podcast downloads with an average of more than 50 million monthly global podcast downloads, also up +18% versus 2020.
November was the News Group’s second best listener month on record, up +26% versus November 2020. Plus, it was the News Group’s third best month ever for podcast downloads with more than 53 million global podcast downloads, up +30% versus the prior year.
TODAY podcasts, in particular, had their second strongest month on record, fueled in part by the launch of “Cooking Up a Storm with Al Roker.” In the series, Al Roker makes a complete Thanksgiving meal, course by course, with the help from some special guests who open up about the dishes they love and the stories behind the food. It was the brand’s third straight month with more than 1 million podcast downloads.
Dateline’s strength as a leading brand in the podcast landscape continues to grow with the launch of Keith Morrison’s new original podcast “The Thing About Helen & Olga,” which quickly hit #1 on the podcast charts.
CNBC podcasts drove a record number of downloads in 2021, up 20% year-over-year.
Over the course of 2021, the News Group launched seven original podcasts, including American Radical, The Thing About Helen & Olga, Cooking Up a Storm with Al Roker, Making Space with Hoda Kotb, Southlake, Killer Role and Mommy Doomsday. Apple Podcasts named Mommy Doomsday one of its top ten new podcasts of the year and Dateline as one of its top free channels of the year. Adweek also named Southlake as the best new podcast of the year and Trymaine Lee as the best podcast host in this year’s Adweek Podcast Awards. Plus, The New Yorker included Southlake in their “Best Podcasts of 2021” list.
NBCU News Group is the #1 news organization on emerging platforms that cater to younger audiences – Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube – beating out all major news networks in social users. Across all of social media, CNBC’s total social footprint increased 15% from the beginning of the year.
NBC News’ Stay Tuned and CNBC’s Make It (which launched this year) on Snapchat continues to reach younger news consumers, with roughly 90% of their followers under the age of 35.
In 2021, the NBCU News Group announced its continued expansion of streaming and digital operations, including a staffing investment of 200 new jobs, with many of the new roles supporting NBC News NOW’s growing streaming operations and programming.
So far in 2021, NBCU News Group Digital has hired more than 150 editorial, technology, product, video, commerce and streaming staff from organizations like the New York Times, CNN, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, POLITICO, Insider, NowThis, ABC News and more.
Plus, Digital is still hiring, with the many of the still-available positions listed on NBCNewsDigitalJobs.com.
*Sources: Comscore Media Metrix (April-November 2021) & Comscore Video Metrix (April – October 2021), 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. Adobe Analytics & Partner Dashboards, Cross-Platform Global Data, November 2021 and January-November 2021. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Audience and Global Downloads, November 2021 and January-November 2021.
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For more information, contact:
Emily Passer
NBC News Digital
Emily.Passer@nbcuni.com
Claudia Meyer-Samargia
NBC News Digital
Claudia.MeyerSamargia@nbcuni.com
