NBCU News Group Saw Average of 136M Monthly Unique Visitors
NBCU News Group Marks Best Streaming Year on Record
NBCNews.com Ranks Ahead of NYTimes.com for Second Half of 2023
MSNBC.com Marks Best Year on Record
CNBC Ranks #1 in Business News Video Time Spent for All of 2023
Jan. 17, 2024 – NBCU News Group (NBC News, TODAY, MSNBC and CNBC) ranks as the #1 digital news organization in the U.S. for 2023, beating all news competition for the third straight year. It was the NBCU News Group’s largest year-long lead over CNN on record. The News Group also ranked as the #1 digital news organization in the U.S. for Q4, seeing a monthly average of 140 million unique visitors for the quarter and leading CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post.
NBCU News Group has ranked #1 for 30 months since becoming a public-facing entity in April 2021 as the leading news brand and #1 for 11consecutive quarters.
In Q4, NBCNews.com reached an average of 81 million unique visitors, growing from the prior year by +3%. In the second half of the year, NBCNews.com averaged 85 million monthly unique visitors, ahead of NYTimes.com, FoxNews.com, ABCNews.com and WashingtonPost.com. It is NBCNews.com’s largest sustained lead over NYTimes.com on record. NBC News on YouTube hit new record levels in 2023 with over 200 million monthly views and up more than 60% year-over-year. Throughout 2023, NBC News ranked #1 on the platform and surpassed CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, NYT and Washington Post on the platform in monthly video views.
NBCU News Group marked its best year on record for streaming, for the fourth consecutive year of growth. Hours viewed were up +75% year-over-year, led by NBC News NOW, Dateline 24/7 and TODAY All Day hitting viewership records in 2023. NBC News NOW had its best year on record, with year-over-year growth across every daily hour.
CNBC Digital recorded an average of 57 million unique visitors in 2023. CNBC is the #2 business news site on the internet, ahead of WSJ.com, Reuters.com, Foxbusiness.com, and Bloomberg.com. CNBC also ranked #1 in business news video time spent for the year, a spot it has held for 25 consecutive months, with 614 million average monthly minutes viewed in Q4 2023 to-date. Additionally, CNBC Make It had its best year ever, with monthly unique visitors up +16% year over year from last year’s record.
MSNBC Digital marked its best year on record in 2023, recording an average of 21 million unique visitors and growing +23% year-over-year. Q4 was also up +46% versus prior year. MSNBC ranks as one of the top three Political News destinations based on monthly unique visitors in Q4, in addition to continuing to rank #1 based on total minutes. MSNBC Digital text saw the strongest year on record with double digit gains across MSNBC.com and Apple News. MSNBC on YouTube saw nearly 200 million monthly views in 2023 and surpassed both CNN and Fox News in the second half of the year. MSNBC on Peacock delivered a record year with triple-digit gains versus the prior year.
TODAY Digital had its second best year on record, averaging 50 million monthly unique visitors in 2023 and growing +4% year-over-year. In 2023 TODAY ranked as the second largest individual publisher among leading lifestyle and entertainment brands. TODAY Digital also ranked as the second leading lifestyle and entertainment brand across key video metrics. TODAY marked its best year on record across Instagram and TikTok with over one billion views per platform in 2023. TODAY surpassed competitors such as GMA, CBS Mornings and People on TikTok with more than 90M monthly views.
Dateline had its best year on record with more than 800 million video views across digital platforms, growing 77% year-over-year. The show ended the year with its best quarter on record in Q4 2023 and surpassed more than 200 million video views for the third straight quarter. The last four quarters have been among the strongest on record.
Meet the Press had a top three year on record with digital video views growing 27% year-over-year. The show saw more than 150 million video views, making it the fourth straight year with more than 100 million video views. The last two quarters have been its strongest since early 2021 with the second half of the year up more than 100% versus the second half of 2022.
NBC Nightly News had a top three year on record with more than 900 million video views across digital platforms growing 18% year-over-year. NBC Nightly News has driven more than 20 million video views for each of the last five quarters.
NBCU News Group marked its best year on record for streaming, fourth consecutive year of growth with hours viewed up +75% year-over-year, led by NBC News NOW, Dateline 24/7 and TODAY All Day hitting viewership records in 2023.
NBC News NOW, NBC News’ 24/7 streaming news network, marked its fourth consecutive record year in 2023. NBC News NOW ended the year with its second best quarter on record in Q4 2023, behind only Q1 2023. NBC News NOW had had three of its best quarters ever in 2023 with every quarter seeing growth or maintaining the prior year’s levels. In addition, every hour of the day saw year-over-year growth in 2023, with some of the largest gains among new or extended programming, such as Hallie Jackson NOW and Stay Tuned NOW.
Dateline 24/7, the streaming channel for the true-crime powerhouse, had its best year on record, growing 364% year-over-year. The channel has grown every quarter since its launch in Q2 2021 and ended the year with its third consecutive record month in December 2023.
TODAY All Day had its third consecutive record year, up nearly 100% versus 2022. It ended the year with its fifth straight record quarter in Q4 2023 and its third straight record month in December 2023.
On Peacock, the NBCU News Group had its best year on record, growing 43% versus 2022 on the platform. Multiple brands had record years on the platform, including Dateline, NBC News and MSNBC. MSNBC, in particular, saw more than three times as many hours viewed in 2023, influenced by the launch of the Morning Joe channel in late March 2023.
NBCU News Group marked its best listenership year on record in 2023, ending the year as a top five podcast publisher in the US, according to Podtrac. The last five quarters are all among the News Group’s strongest on record with each quarter reaching at least 10 million monthly listeners on average. Plus, the NBCU News Group delivered an average 63 million monthly global podcast downloads in 2023.
MSNBC original podcasts had their second straight record year with double-digit year-over-year growth. The brand had eighteen podcasts reach more than one million downloads, including six original shows. Prosecuting Donald Trump delivered more than 10 million downloads in 2023. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, which launched in late 2022, was named as one of Apple’s most-shared shows in 2023.
NBCU News Group continues to lead all other news brands across younger emerging platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat in 2023.On TikTok, NBCU News Group ranks as #1 in both followers and views, ahead of ABC News, CBS News, The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times and Fox News. NBCU News Group ended the year with 10 million followers on TikTok with +30% growth versus 2022 and 200 million monthly video views on the platform.
NBC News is up +17% in followers versus this time last year and delivered 76 million monthly views on TikTok. MSNBC is up +37% in followers, while TODAY Digital is up +68% and delivered 90 million monthly views, the strongest year on record. CNBC and CNBC Make It social accounts had the strongest year ever with a combined +93% uptick in followers and +165% increase in monthly views versus the same time period last year.
Stay Tuned ended the year with 11.6 million followers across platforms. Stay Tuned drove its strongest year since 2020 with nearly 60 million monthly views across platforms and reached record consumption across YouTube and Instagram.
Sources: Comscore Media Metrix® , April 2021 – December 2023, Desktop & Mobile excluding Social Incremental, Monthly Unique Visitors, U.S. & Comscore Video Metrix®, April 2021 – November 2023, U.S. desktop internet population 2+ and mobile internet population 13+ years old, Video Views & Video Minutes, 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 2023. Podtrac, Total Mobile and Desktop US Audience and Global Downloads, December 2023. ListenFirst Media, December 2023. Snapchat Analytics Portal, December 2023.
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Claudia Meyer-Samargia
NBC News
Claudia.MeyerSamargia@nbcuni.com
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