How NBC News’ Election Night Digital Wins Predict the Future of Broadcast News
If Election Day is the political equivalent of the Super Bowl, then NBC News’ digital platforms scored a touchdown to kick off the month. NBCNews.com and NBC News Now had their two highest days on record, November 5 and 6, and also dominated the social space among the big three broadcasters.
“It reflects a lot of what we’ve been working on throughout the past year,” Catherine Kimexecutive vice president of editorial at NBC News, explains her team’s game plan to TVNewser. “We relied on live results, live news and live streaming and leveraged the full operation of NBC News during big events like Election Day.”
This preparation resulted in more than 100 million video views for NBC News Now, the streamer’s largest audience to date. Meanwhile, NBCNews.com received more than 30 million unique visitors, with the constantly refreshed live results pages boosting page views to around 120 million, well beyond what it achieved in 2020. Plus, the Election Day live blog now holds the record for the most viewed article in the site’s history.
Kim also made an early bet on TikTok as a news-hungry social media platform, and that marker paid off on election night. The network estimates it received 127 million views on TikTok on November 5, and an additional 110 million views the next day, when the president-elect Donald Trump won his victory over the vice president Kamala Harris. These numbers far outpaced broadcast competitors ABC News and CBS News on the platform.
It should be noted that in relation to its numerical growth, NBC linear election coverage has seen slight declines since the previous presidential election cycle, another indication of the direction the public is migrating to get their information. And the broader shift from linear to digital is something all three broadcast networks will seriously navigate over the next few years. (We spoke with Kim before learning that Comcast would remove many of its cable outlets(including MSNBC and CNBC) into a separate company in 2025.)
As social streaming shows like those on Netflix Jake Paul against. Mike Tyson combat shows, these audiences are increasingly captivated by live events. Kim says NBC’s focus on delivering live results through its TikTok feed has helped keep younger viewers engaged — a marked change from 2020, when that audience wasn’t as engaged. listen to the horse race minute by minute.
Catherine Kim, executive vice president of editorial at NBC NewsCourtesy of NBCUniversal
“There has been strong engagement around these results videos and race calls on TikTok,” notes Kim, adding that the willingness of NBC’s decision desk to be the first to make calls likely contributed to the Increased search traffic on NBCNews.com throughout election night. “This reflects our careful planning around live data and early sharing of information,” she explains. “The symphony of live results, live blog, live data and live streaming along with promoting our content early and often across all platforms helped us win the night in so many ways.”
Of course, effectively communicating these gains to advertisers is the next step in the broadcast news industry’s continued journey toward the emerging digital frontier. Kim says she thinks buyers and retailers still want to associate with “credible, trustworthy, quality content,” even if the platforms providing that content could change. And she’s aware that it will be up to her and NBC’s digital team to stay on top of the next audience migration.
“There was a time when X was Twitter and Facebook was king,” she says with a laugh, reflecting on social media’s not-so-distant past. “We’ve become accustomed to this idea that, in digital, what may be useful one day may not be useful the next in terms of creating and reaching audiences. It’s just the nature of the beast.
It’s not for nothing, but NBC and other broadcast networks may need to specifically rethink their TikTok strategy sooner rather than later. Earlier this year, the House passed a law supporting a ban on the platform in the United States if its China-based owner refuses to sell his share of the company. The deadline for this sale is January 19, although Trump expressed his opposition to the ban.
In the meantime, Kim says NBC News is keeping abreast of which platforms are seeing spikes in engagement, including Bluesky, Reddit and WhatsApp. Having lived through the “Facebook is King” years, she is well aware that there is a trade-off in helping a third-party business grow their digital profile, namely that there may very well come a time when you will have more need it than she needs it. You. This is what happened when Mark Zuckerberg information regularly underestimated on meta-platforms, resulting in a significant drop in traffic for a number of media organizations.
Kim says one of the ways she seeks to mitigate this risk is to ensure NBC News’ digital platform is in good shape. “It is extremely important to have your own Internet destination where you provide reliable, trustworthy and credible information,” she notes. “And it’s also important to go on social platforms and share news stories, because that’s where consumers get their information.”
Looking ahead to 2025, Kim expects NBC News Now and NBCNews.com to continue investing in stories where live coverage and raw data – two elements that were abundant on election night – can capture the clicks and feeds from an increasingly fragmented audience. In addition to the transfer of power from the President Joe Biden For President-elect Trump, Kim identifies sports, climate change and major weather events as other topics she hopes to cover in depth.
“How we share live news is something we’ll explore a little more,” Kim says, adding that more original videos (especially of the vertical variety) for social platforms and NBCNews.com are another priority.
“Ultimately, it’s about how to provide credible, reliable and trustworthy journalism in a way that is accessible to the public,” she continues. “That doesn’t mean it’s simplified, but just always staying true to the experience of the platforms we’re on.”
