ABC newscast beats NBC’s

ABC’s “World News” edged ahead in the evening news ratings last week, the first time it has beaten “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” this season.

With an average of 9.7 million viewers, the Charles Gibson-anchored newscast outstripped NBC’s audience of 9.52 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Third-place “CBS Evening News” attracted almost 8 million viewers, the most since Katie Couric’s debut as anchor.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” John Reiss, “Nightly’s” executive producer, said Tuesday. “It’s only one week. We’ve been growing tremendously off our lead-in” from the local NBC newscasts.

Still, the win for ABC comes after the second-place broadcast has posted steady increases for the last few months, helping it close the gap with NBC, which has lost an average of 590,000 viewers this season, a drop of 6% compared to last year.

Jon Banner, executive producer of “World News,” called last week’s win gratifying but noted that the broadcast wants to make the move to first place permanent. “We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us,” he said.

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Matea Gold