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ABC News' Charles Gibson 'Sweeps' to Victory
ABC’s nightly news program with Charles Gibson has eclipsed NBC’s broadcast and finished first in a sweeps month in both overall viewers and the most sought-after demographic for the first time in more than a decade. Now a shakeup is afoot at NBC, long the dominant evening news broadcast. For the four-week sweeps period beginning on Jan. 29, "ABC World News” was seen by an average of 9.69 million viewers a night, compared to 9.65 million for NBC’s "Nightly News with Brian Williams.” Katie Couric’s "CBS Evening News” was a distant third with 7.6 million viewers. The last time "World News” finished first in a sweeps month in total viewers and in the target audience of 25-to-54-year-olds was in November 1996. The last time NBC’s "Nightly News” failed to win a sweeps month was in November 2001, with Tom Brokaw in the anchor’s chair.
Last week alone, "World News” has 3.02 million viewers in the 25-54 demographic, compared to 2.73 million for "Nightly News.”
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"World News” executive producer Jon Banner told Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Gail Shister that the program’s recent ratings success can be attributed almost entirely to Gibson, who debuted in May after then co-anchor Bob Woodruff nearly died in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq. "It’s taken some time for the audience to realize Charlie is on ‘World News’ and not on ‘Good Morning America’ anymore,” he said. The ratings surge at ABC "has left some people at the networks wondering whether Mr. Gibson – who, at 63, is the oldest and most established of the three [anchors] – may be proving more attractive to more viewers than Mr. Williams and Ms. Couric,” the New York Times reported. Gibson has picked up nearly 60,000 viewers a night over the last year, while Couric has lost around 120,000 and Williams has lost about 570,000.
According to Shister, "NBC suits are nervous” about the ratings slip. On Thursday sources said "Nightly News” executive producer John Reiss was being replaced, although NBC executives told the Times that a change in the newscast had been in the works for several weeks and was not related to the recent ratings slide.
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