NBCU News Group’s digital properties reached 144 million unique visitors
NBCU News Group commits to significant streaming and digital investment, adds new programming and 200 new jobs
August 19, 2021 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) brought in 144 million unique visitors in July, ranking as the #1 news organization in the U.S., beating CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post for a fourth straight month. NBCU News Group was also #1 in total video minutes watched and total video starts in the month of June, with 371 million views and 1.7 billion minutes watched.
CNBC Digital, which continues to rank in the top three Business News properties for unique visitors for the past 14 consecutive months, has ranked as the #1 brand in video minutes and views (June 2021) within the category, with nearly 14 million unique video viewers, and holding that #1 spot for six consecutive months.
In July, CNBC.com’s coverage of the housing boom led to a record traffic month for the Real Estate vertical and CNBC’s “America’s Top States for Business” tentpole franchise drove record traffic in 2021, three times higher than in 2019. CNBC also announced a new editorial initiative focused on climate change, led by senior tech editor Matt Rosoff. The new section (cnbc.com/climate) will look at how corporations and investors are navigating a changing climate and dive into topics such as the new technology being used to reduce carbon emissions and help us adapt to an increasingly hostile environment; the billions of dollars being poured into clean energy; the changing scope of business planning and practices; the political and regulatory impacts; and personal strategies for preserving wealth and livelihood.
MSNBC ranked within the top five entities in the Political News Category for a fourth straight month and ranked as the #1 brand for video minutes, views and viewers within the Political News category in June. In addition, MSNBC.com continues to expand its commitment to written commentary and analysis with new product presentations and more than 30 regular columnists contributing to the MSNBC Daily section and newsletter. MSNBC Daily has reached record-setting traffic for the past three months since launch.
TODAY Digital has reached more than 50M unique visitors for eight of the last nine months. It also continues to rank among the top 10 entities in the Lifestyle category for video views.
NBCU News Group’s streaming services, TODAY All Day and NBC News NOW, had top months, with NBC News NOW seeing 44 million video views and 14 million hours watched, up +166% year-to-date in 2021 over the same time frame in 2020. It was the streaming platform’s best July ever, with viewers on average watching for nearly 50 minutes at a time on OTT platforms.
TODAY All Day saw their best month on record, beating the prior month’s record by more than 20%. Almost every platform where TODAY is consumed saw record months in the first full month of All Day’s new programming.
NBC News NOW produced a streaming special – “Cuba’s Fight For Freedom: Patria Y Vida” – hosted by Jose Diaz-Balart, examining whether the protestors’ demands for change will be the start of a new movement in Cuba. NBC News NOW also presented “Stars of Team USA,” a one-hour special on the American Olympians who competed at Tokyo, hosted by Savannah Sellers.
July was one of the News Group’s top five listener months on record, continuing to rank in the top ten of all podcast publishers, with 46 million downloads across all podcasts and showcasts and overall audience up +12% versus July 2020.
TODAY podcasts had one of their best months ever, up +45% vs. July 2020.
NBCU News Group recently announced it would make a significant investment in its streaming and digital business, launching new original streaming programming and adding 200 new roles across NBC News NOW, TODAY, NBC News Digital, commerce, video and more.
Continuing its commitment to impactful journalism and quality original streaming content, NBC News NOW will add substantial staffing resources and several new hours of live, original programming featuring trusted journalists, beginning this fall. This new streaming schedule will include a daily, primetime news program anchored by senior national correspondent, Tom Llamas; a daily evening show and weekly special newsmagazine series hosted by senior Washington correspondent and anchor, Hallie Jackson; and an evening news analysis and explainer program, hosted by anchor, Joshua Johnson.
NBC News NOW will also continue to expand its weekday live programming throughout the fall and add to its weekend live, original programming beginning in Q122. The streaming network will also begin its international distribution later this year.
NBCU News Group Digital will also build on its recent success by adding dozens of new digital roles across its brands, including doubling the TODAY newsroom, growing NBC News’ successful breaking news and beat reporting, expanding the MSNBC digital footprint and continuing the momentum of commerce and CNBC Pro. All of this will be underpinned by continued investment in mobile, video, social, product, engineering and more.
Many of the roles are already posted on NBCNews.com/careers and hiring is underway in editorial, product and operations across the News Group. At NBC News NOW, new executive producers include Jill Billante, executive producer for Hallie Jackson’s new show, Lisa Crivelli, executive producer for Joshua Johnson’s new show and Mike Milhaven, executive producer of Morning News NOW. Margaret de Luna joins CNBC to lead the brand’s Direct-to-Consumer business. And Liz Veiga has joined to lead product for NBC News & MSNBC, while Chris Hardtman joins to lead Design and UX across the News Group.
*Sources: Comscore Media Metrix (July 2021) & Comscore Video Metrix (June 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, July 2021. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Audience and Global Downloads, July 2021.
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For more information, contact:
Emily Passer
NBC News Digital
Emily.Passer@nbcuni.com
