EXCLUSIVE: Dateline is finishing the TV season on top.
Per Nielsen, Dateline outperformed its competition (namely 20/20 on ABC) to become the top Friday newsmagazine among both adults 25-54 and 18-49 for the 2025-2026 broadcast primetime season. This marks the second consecutive season that the program can lay claim to that title.
The last time Dateline outperformed 20/20 in both demos for two consecutive seasons was 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, Nielsen data shows.
Over the season, Dateline reached 126.7M total viewers, up 4% compared to the same period the prior year, according to Nielsen’s most current Big
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