NBC’s Lead in Evening News Wars Increases

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK – As Brian Williams completes his first year as anchor this week, he can take comfort that NBC’s "Nightly News" has lately widened its lead in the ratings.

Five of the past six weeks, NBC’s margin over second-place "World News Tonight" on ABC has exceeded one million viewers. That only happened twice in the previous 29 weeks, not once during the period between Peter Jennings’ April announcement that he had cancer and his death on Aug. 7, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Both "World News Tonight" and the "CBS Evening News" are without permanent anchors, although Bob Schieffer has filled in regularly since Dan Rather left in March and third-place CBS has lately shown improvement.

"I think the fact that we’re stable and the other two guys aren’t as stable clearly helps us," said John Reiss, executive producer of "Nightly News."

Williams took over for Tom Brokaw as NBC’s chief anchor on Dec. 2, 2004.

There’s some evidence that "Nightly News" gains more viewers than its rivals each year when daylight-saving time ends in late October. Also, an ABC News spokeswoman said that, compared to last year at the same time, NBC’s lead over "World News Tonight" hasn’t really changed.

"This has been a difficult and emotional several months for everyone at `World News Tonight,’ said Cathie Levine, ABC News spokeswoman, on Tuesday. "The fact that the broadcast is more than holding its own against the competition and its extravagantly-promoted anchor is something we are all very proud of."

Levine said "World News Tonight" does so well among viewers aged 25-to-54 that, despite the overall viewership disadvantage, ABC is able to charge as much for commercial time on its broadcast as NBC. NBC disputes that.

ABC News President David Westin said short-term changes in the ratings won’t affect his timetable on selecting Jennings’ successor.

"Peter was there for 23 years," Westin said. "If we do this the right way, we’ll have an anchor situation in place for 20 more years, and it’s much more important to have that done for 20 years than to have it done for one month of ratings."

The top candidates for the job are Charles Gibson, Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff, either alone or in some combination. Each person has appeared as a substitute anchor since Jennings left the broadcast last spring.

With Gibson, Westin faces the difficult decision of whether giving the veteran anchor the plum evening job will hurt "Good Morning America," ABC News’ most profitable broadcast.

If anything, a recent slip in ABC’s competitive situation would seem to strengthen Gibson’s hand. After several months of pulling double duty at "GMA" and the evening news a couple of times a week, he hasn’t anchored "World News Tonight" during the past two months. Some of ABC’s rivals privately consider him the strongest competitor.

At NBC, executives believe Williams’ standing was helped by his coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

"People watched Brian, they liked what they saw and they’ve stayed with him ever since," Reiss said. "It used to be that we would win big when there was big news. Now we win big when there’s not such big news."

In response to frequent complaints from viewers about never hearing "good news," NBC has started a semi-regular series, "Making a Difference," that profiles people who help others.

Meanwhile, CBS has been on the hunt for a new evening news format for more than a year since Rather announced he was stepping down. The search was delayed again with the appointment of a new news division president, Sean McManus. CBS has expressed interest in "Today" anchor Katie Couric, whose contract with NBC expires next year.

Despite the uncertainty, the "CBS Evening News" with Schieffer is the only evening newscast to increase its viewership over last season. ABC and NBC are down, which they attribute in part to last year being an election year.