ABC News broke another big NBC News streak on Tuesday.
Over a year after "Good Morning America" snapped the "Today" ratings streak, the network's flagship show, "World News with Diane Sawyer," beat "NBC Nightly News" in the all-important A25-54 category for a full week for the first time since November of 2008, the New York Times' Brian Stelter reported.
The margin was wafer-thin--"World News" won by just 38,000--but ABC will be crowing nonetheless, as it could portend a sign of things to come. "Nightly" has proven to be the most resilient of NBC's news properties, maintaining its perch at the top of the evening news heap for many years (though ABC won the demo for the 2006-2007 season). "World News" has yet to beat its rival in the total ratings for any sustainable period of time; as an NBC release pointed out on Tuesday, "'Nightly' has won in total viewers for 202 consecutive weeks, and in 249 of the past 250 weeks."
But "World" has been closing the gap with "Nightly" for some time. Not a week goes by when ABC doesn't send a press release out noting that the margin between the two shows is shrinking and shrinking.
If ABC were to manage to overtake "Nightly" on a regular basis, it would mean that all of NBC's marquee shows--"Today," "Nightly" and "Meet the Press"--would have slipped out of first place in the last couple of years.
Related
Before You Go
