NBC News Digital Bucks Industry Trend With +8% Traffic Surge — Closes In On Leader CBS

(Photo Credit: NBC News)

Several major news sites entered March coming off of rough months for digital traffic — but NBC News was a notable exception.

The Peacock’s web traffic jumped 8% year-over-year in February, bucking an overall downturn in the industry and helping NBC News leapfrog other heavy-hitters, like CNN, when it comes to unique visitors, according to new data shared with Mediaite on Tuesday.

NBC News pulled in 87 million unique visitors last month, per Comscore. That earned it the silver medal for the month behind CBS News, which had 90 million unique visitors, and helped push it ahead of Fox News and its 85 million unique visitors and CNN’s 81 million. (Fox pulled in 90 million uniques if you count its Fox Business and Fox Weather traffic towards the month; NBC’s month climbed to 116 million uniques when traffic from properties like Today were added.)

It is worth pointing out CBS’s local stations are factored into its traffic, while that is not the case for NBC. So it is not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Notably, NBC’s Comscore includes traffic for Dateline in its digital traffic total, but a source familiar with the data said that had a “minimal” effect on the total count.

The year-over-year increase for NBC also stood out, considering Fox News dipped 8% annually and CBS News dropped 13% compared to traffic in February 2025; CNN’s traffic was roughly the same compared to a year ago. A CNN source noted its website is paywalled, unlike several competitors.

Some other big media outlets took big hits in February as well. The Washington Post’s unique visitors plunged 21% annually to 41 million readers — which coincided with 60,000 subscribers ditching the paper following hundreds of job cuts. ABC News had a 20% drop too, hitting 35 million unique visitors, while The New York Times declined 4% year-over-year to 79 million unique visitors.

What worked for NBC? A company insider pointed to Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas interviewing President Donald Trump and the network carrying the Winter Olympics as two major traffic drivers; the start of the war in Iran on the last day of the month also helped NBC close February on a high note.

And if you’re interested in reading how the battle for cable news viewers went last month, click here.

With Operation Epic Fury driving coverage, it’ll be worth seeing if the major outlets can reverse the traffic downturn — and if NBC News can keep its momentum going.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!