I would like to find out about the demographics of popular TV
discussion, news, and features shows like "The Today Show," "Good
Morning AMerica," "CBS Sunday Morning," "48 HOurs," "The NewsHOur with
Jim Lehrer," etc.  How large is
the audience of each?  And how is the audience broken down by age,
sex, income, etc?

The first question to you is why you want to know - just general
curiosity? You want specific or just general tendencies? Because there
are answers but because advertisers see news shows differently than
regular programming, some seemingly obvious reasons go out the window.

Also keep in mind that demographic ratings are really the core reason
networks, advertisers and studios pay millions of dollars to AC
Nielsen (and others) so it's not very easy to get specific numbers.
And you're also asking about the broad spectrum of shows even though
they all appear to be news oriented.

For instance, the network morning shows actually break out different
ratings between 7-8 and 8-9 because the audience composition is
different. 7-8 tends to be more affluent people trying to catch the
last bit of news/traffic/weather before dashing off to work while 8-9
tends to skew toward stay-at-homes - you may have noticed the emphasis
on guests are different depending on the time. If you want basic
ratings, this is a generalization (NBC & NBC's morning shows ratings
might flucuation 10-15% but CBS is pretty steady) but typically, there
are about 14 million morning show viewers with NBC getting about 6
million, ABC about 5 million with the rest to CBS. But overall
demographics are meaningless here as research and to advertisers.

The Sunday morning news show get very low ratings but make huge
amounts of money for the networks because the audience composition is
very affluent. Separate research shows that very high corporate
executives (CEO's, Chairman's, CFO's, etc ...) tend to watch very
little TV but they watch the Sunday morning shows (that's why you see
ads for defense companies and non-consumer corporations ... on the
other hand, most demo info is irrelevant because it's really very low
but if you can get 1,000 CEO's to watch something, that's worth huge
dollars to many corporations but 1,000 on the AC Nielsen national
ratings is essentially zero.

So, while demo information is useful for news programs, it's mostly
irrevelant to the decision-maker: the advertiser. Advertisers who buy
on news programs know their audience tends to be older
(health/financial, etc ...) or they're buying it to be on a
prestigious, serious environment that adds weight to the product they
are selling ... on the flip side, there are advertisers who will never
advertise on the news because they presume it's bad news and puts
people in a bad mood. So, advertisers on news shows either a) want to
be there for the reason I listed above or b) are getting a spot
because they bought the cheapest ad method (just buying gross ratings
points so the network decides how to achieve those ratings) or c) very
rarely, they will request to be on a show because it might be a
light-hearted segment like they're covering the making of movie so a
movie studio will buy some time.

The second part of the morning shows are really treated like Regis &
Kelly - light fluff entertainment so you'll see more movie studios and
consumer companies who want no part of serious "depressing" news ...
well, hope that helps you on your way a little.

Thanks for your excellent answer.

I'm representing the author of a trade book scheduled who was
scheduled for appearances on the Today Show and for CBS News Sunday
Morning. He was bumped from the Today Show because of time conflicts.
I'm trying to find out what the potential value of these shows and the
other shows I listed is for selling books through author interviews. 
For someone hawking a book, is there any way to specifically compare
Today with Sunday Morning?

Also, are there some links you could give me to follow ratings for
myself in the future?

Thanks again!
BAW

Well, the Today Show is generally known as the best place to sell
books on TV even for more serious topics (other than the defunct Oprah
Book which of course tended to only select a specific type of ficion).
The ABC Morning Show runs second. The other shows do not seem to make
as much of a splah but most of the evidence is antedotal though
authors having a successful appearance on the Today Show do seem to
immediately get a bump on Amazon.

There have been feature stories done on this but there doesn't seem to
be any direct links, you might try searching the NY Times archives, I
believe there was a story done on this in the last two years.

Unfortunately, no demographic ratings for the news category is printed
online because I believe:
a) they believe there's no real "general" interest
b) advertisers don't really care
c) advertisers already know the audience composition patterns are
pretty set in stone (ie: not a lot of 18 year olds are suddenly going
to start watching Tom Brokaw)
d) Ratings are expensive - especially demo rayings and research. 

In fact, nothing is posted on a regular basis and even the trades like
Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, Electronic Media (plus others) who do
cover the weekly HH, 18-34 and 18-49 ratings for the morning and early
evening national news never really talk about demographics. Only the
weekly primetime HH and the 18-49 ratings are printed every week. I
believe the USA Today prints those, yahooTV and zap2it.com prints the
top 20 but that's pretty much it.

So, if you can get him back on the Today Show, that's golden. The rest
is pretty subjective to if you feel it's the right environment ...
which is essentially what the advertisers are doing.

Good luck.