• December 3, 2004

Nearly 16 million viewers tuned in to see Tom Brokaw hang it up after 23 years anchoring the NBC Nightly News.

In what turned out to be the largest audience for the NBC national evening newscast in roughly seven years with 15.4 million viewers, the farewell for the 64-year-old Brokaw beat out ABC's World News Tonight's 9.2 million viewers and CBS Evening News' 7.2 million.

The viewer anticipation of Brokaw's final sign-off showed all season. According to Nielsen, through four weeks of TV season, Nightly News averaged 9.7 million viewers and typically had 1.1 million more viewers than ABC's this season, compared to 412,000 during the same stretch last year.