PBS NewsHour’s P2+ Audience Up 21% in 2016-17 Season at 1.17 Million Viewers

Washington, DC (November 16, 2017) — PBS NewsHour, the nightly news broadcast anchored by managing editor Judy Woodruff, closed out the 2016-17 television season (September 19, 2016 – September 24, 2017) +21% above the previous season (September 21, 2015 – September 18, 2016), at 1.17 million P2+ viewers compared to 966,000 the year prior. Each month, NewsHour on average reached 11.5 million viewers, up +6% compared to 10.8 million in the 2015-16 season.

NewsHour Online, which last month debuted a faster, sleeker and more responsive redesign, also saw significant gains, reaching more than 60 million users, up +41% over the previous season.

Special programming extended beyond Election Night 2016, Inauguration Day 2017, and the 2016 Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, to include the six-part series “Inside Putin’s Russia,” produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, national polling produced in partnership with NPR and Marist, and NewsHour’s annual “Rethinking College” series.

NewsHour’s social platforms also saw significant engagement and follower growth. PBS NewsHour on Facebook passed the 1 million fan mark in November 2016, ending the 2016-17 season at 1.3 million fans, up +38% compared to the previous season. Average monthly reach on Facebook surpassed 37 million, while NewsHour averaged 17.8 million monthly video views. On Twitter, NewsHour averaged 23.7 monthly impressions, up +75%. During the 2016-17 television season, NewsHour served as Twitter’s exclusive live streaming partner for President Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress and Jeff Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as for Inauguration Day 2017 where NewsHour’s live stream remains the most watched one-day event live stream on the platform.

PBS NewsHour viewers watched 1.2 billion minutes of video on YouTube this past season, racking up 138 million individual views, an increase of +85% over last season. Average views clocked in at nearly 9 minutes, an increase of a full minute over the previous year. Meanwhile, OTT viewership jumped +200%.

Mobile users drove 26 million mobile app pageviews in the PBS NewsHour’s mobile app, raising last year’s figure +85%. In addition, 10.8 million unique viewers read or watched PBS NewsHour content in Apple News.

Several NewsHour reporting projects and journalists were also recognized with industry awards during the 2016-17 television season, including:

• “Deadly Oil Fields,” produced in partnership with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, named recipient of News & Documentary Emmy Award in the Outstanding Business and Economic Reporting in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast category
• “The End of AIDS?” named recipient of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2017 Communication Awards in the Film/Radio/TV category
• “The End of AIDS?” named recipient of an Association of Health Care Journalists award in the Public Health (large) category
• “The End of AIDS?” named finalist for NIHCM Foundation Research and Journalism Awards
• “Fight for Peace” named recipient of Overseas Press Club’s Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for best reporting in any medium on Latin America
• “The Fight for Iraq” named recipient of Overseas Press Club citation (honorable mention) for the Edward R. Murrow Award
• Judy Woodruff and the late Gwen Ifill named recipients of the 2017 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
• Judy Woodruff named recipient of Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism
• Nsikan Akpan and Matt Ehrichs named recipients of 2016 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Silver Award

Media Contact: Nick Massella
nmassella@newshour.org