NEWS AT THE FRONT

NBC Troops March On: Last week turned out to be a pretty good one for NBC News all around. The network is crediting the presence of Bryant Gumbel in Saudi Arabia for raising audience share of the “Today” show 10% over the previous week. NBC, which looked slow out of the blocks, finally got correspondent Keith Miller and top consultant Gordon Manning into Iraq on Sunday. And late last week, the network obtained 14 visas from Saudi Arabia, more than the total alotted to rival networks so far. Responding to claims by NBC News officials that Iraq was withholding visas from the network because of its critical reports about Iraq over the years, the Iraqi Embassy notified the NBC News bureau in Washington it was granting the visas to prove the allegations wrong.