Getting your player ready...
The tortoise-like Charlie Gibson outpaced the hare named Brian Williams in the evening news ratings race for the crucial February sweeps period. ABC’s “World News” outperformed NBC s Nightly News by 111,000 viewers.
ABC counted 9,677,000 viewers to NBC’s 9,566,000.
Gibson is ascendant after a period of unusual churn on the air, with Katie Couric taking over the chair from Dan Rather on CBS, and ABC enduring a shaky handoff from the late Peter Jennings to a younger team, through Bob Woodruff’s nearly fatal injuries in Iraq. Through it all, Williams had been the frontrunner among the network evening newscasts. Now, Gibson is No. 1 and executive producer changes are expected in Williams’ shop.
