Amber Heard, Keith Morrison Push ‘Dateline NBC’ To Big 2Q Ratings Win

Boosted by a high-profile prime time interview—and a hit new true crime podcast—NBC’s long-running newsmagazine Dateline cruised to an across-the-board ratings victory over its rival, ABC’s 20/20, for the just-ended second quarter of 2022—Dateline’s first across-the-board win since 4Q 2020. “It’s been a busy first part of the year and we aren’t taking our foot off the pedal anytime soon,” Dateline senior executive producer David Corvo told me.

The second quarter win demonstrates the surprising resilience of programs like Dateline and 20/20, which continue to draw huge audiences even as the overall viewership for the legacy broadcast networks continues to shrink as younger viewers avoid “appointment” viewing in favor of consuming their favorite shows on demand and on a variety of devices via streaming platforms (a Nielsen survey released last year showed the cumulative audience for streaming networks edging ahead of broadcast television).

To keep viewers showing up, Dateline landed a big interview: Savannah Guthrie’s one-on-one conversation with Amber Heard, which made news — lots of it (though not all of it positive).

But Dateline’s biggest ratings draw of the quarter was Keith Morrison’s two-hour special edition that told the story behind Morrison’s hit podcast The Thing About Pam (which was adapted into a scripted series by the same name starring Renee Zellweger), which drew a huge audience of nearly 6 million viewers on April 15—Dateline’s largest ratings delivery in two years. The scripted version of The Thing About Pam made history with its pilot episode, which is the top-rated digital launch in NBC history.

Morrison, who talked to me in 2020 about discovering an entirely new way of telling true crime stories with podcasts, launched his newest podcast, The Seduction, in June. It quickly became the top-rated podcast on Apple for two weeks straight—an indication that Dateline’s team of producers and correspondents are willing to reinvent themselves and their show to keep it relevant to viewers.

“I have the great advantage at Dateline of working with people, some I’ve been with for over 25 years. They are in the top of their field in our line of work, and they’re just phenomenally good at what they do. That’s a resource that I never take lightly,” Morrison recently told Vanity Fair. “I need those people. They provide the bones and the structure, and it just allows me to sit back and think, ‘Okay, now how are we going to dress this up and make it interesting?’ So that’s what I get to do. I take what’s already pretty good and try to turn it into something that sounds like me.’”

SubstackEpisode 1: Keith Morrison, ‘Dateline NBC’

“What differentiates Dateline is our storytelling and the numerous ways viewers can find us,” Dateline executive producer and NBC News Studios president Liz Cole told me. “In just the past few months, we’ve released a #1 podcast, premiered our first original series on Peacock, and aired Savannah’s exclusive headline-making interview with Amber Heard.”