• by Wayne Friedman , September 14, 2017

In the top TV markets, Nielsen says cable TV networks are posting the strongest growth versus local TV news and national TV news programming. Overall, TV news viewing is climbing.

Total TV news viewing rose 11% in the first quarter of 2017 to 44.1 billion weekly gross news minutes among adults in the 25 local people meter markets over full-year 2016. It was 25% higher than 2015.

Cable TV networks remain a major part of that growth. In the first quarter of this year, viewers 18+ spent 2 hours/23 minutes of weekly viewing on cable, up from 1 hour/59 minutes on average for 2016.

This data comes from Nielsen’s Local TV View -- time spent based on population across local-people-meter markets.

Local TV and broadcast network news programming has been primarily stable. Local TV was at 2 hours/22 minutes, up slightly from the 2 hours/16-minute level for 2016. In 2015, it was 2 hours/21 minutes.

National TV news was at 1 hour/2 minutes, up from 1 hour in 2016 and 59 minutes in 2015.

For the first quarter, the largest TV news viewer segment growth was consumers 50+ -- up 23% to 9 hours/59 minutes a week versus 2016. Those 35-64 TV viewers grew 18.9% to 3 hours/46 minutes; 25-54s climbed 16.7% to 3 hours/30 minutes.

Although much has been said about younger TV viewers getting more news from social media and other online news platforms, Nielsen says 18-34 viewers upped their weekly total TV news viewing -- although more slowly that other demographics -- by 7.2% to 1 hour/14 minutes.