Evening News Ratings: ABC’s World News Back on Top
Gibson Returns to Anchor Seat After Two-Week Vacation
By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/11/2007 10:30:00 AM MT
After slipping to No. 2 two weeks ago, ABC’s World News was back on top last week.
Charles Gibson was back in the anchor chair last week after a two-week vacation, putting World News ahead of Nightly News with Brian Williams by a slim margin of 30,000 total viewers (and 100,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo). For the abbreviated Labor Day week, World News was watched by 7.81 viewers compared with Nightly’s7.78 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Monday, Sept. 3, was excluded from last week’s evening news averages. Thursday, Sept. 6, was also excluded from NBC’s average, since the network was affected by football.
CBS Evening News with Katie Couric did not get a ratings boost from Couric’s trip to Iraq and Syria. Generally speaking, anchor travel doesn’t usually translate into ratings bonanzas, and CBS News is certainly looking for more long-term impact from Couric’s Middle East sojourn in giving her more ballast and gravitas. Even so, last week’s Evening News average of 5.46 million viewers was off from the show’s season-to-date average of 6.77 million (for the period September 2006-present).
