NEW YORK (AP) - Brian Williams travelled to Iraq, Charles Gibson went on vacation and the competition for evening-news viewers was as heated as ever.
NBC's "Nightly News" averaged 8.99 million viewers last week, Nielsen Media Research said.
ABC's "World News," with Elizabeth Vargas substituting for Gibson, logged 8.94 million. Both had identical 6.
1 ratings and 12 audience shares.
Gibson had won three of the previous four weeks, heightening the rivalry among the networks' flagship news shows, where viewer habits tend to change very slowly.
NBC's Williams took the first reporting trip by a network anchor since ABC's Bob Woodruff was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in January 2006.
Two of the three network evening newscasts have changed offscreen bosses in the last few weeks. Alexandra Wallace took over for John Reiss as executive producer of "Nightly News," and television veteran Rick Kaplan replaced Rome Hartman as the "CBS Evening News." The Katie Couric-anchored CBS newscast averaged seven million viewers last week (5.
0 rating, 10 share).
With the February ratings "sweeps" over and Fox airing three editions of "American Idol" last week, many of its competitors in the prime-time race raised the white flag and put in reruns.
Fox averaged 14.
1 million viewers (8.4 rating, 14 share) for the week, CBS had 10.8 million (7.
0, 12), NBC had 7.9 million (5.1, 8), ABC had 6.
8 million (4.5, 7).
A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or one per cent of the estimated 111.
4 million TV homes in the United States. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of March 5-11, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 28.
55 million; "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 27.95 million; "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 27.52 million; "House," Fox, 24.
4 million; "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader," Fox, 20.66 million; "Deal or No Deal" (Monday), NBC, 18.39 million; "Without a Trace," CBS, 17.
53 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 15.451 million; "Cold Case," CBS, 15.447 million; "Heroes," NBC, 14.
9 million.
Celebrated opera collaborators John Estacio and John Murrell are set to raise the curtain on their latest full-length work, Frobisher, in Calgary this weekend. The Virgin Festival concert series adds a new stop in Vancouver this year, with a lineup that includes the Killers, My Chemical Romance, Billy Talent, Muse, AFI and Victoria's own Hot Hot Heat. An interpretation of Mozart's The Magic Flute rich with West Coast native symbolism opens this weekend, the culmination of a three-year partnership between Vancouver Opera and a First Nations group. The Washington, D.C., mayor's office hosted about 100 homeless people on Thursday at a screening of The Pursuit of Happyness, about a homeless man who becomes a millionaire.
Heritage Minister Bev Oda announced Friday continued federal support of $200 million over the next few years to the Canadian Television Fund, which has been embroiled in a controversy after two major contributors withdrew their financial support. The head of a human rights group in Afghanistan says he lacks the staff to monitor the fate of Taliban suspects handed over by Canadian soldiers to Afghan officials. The world's population is expected to soar to 9.2 billion by 2050, largely because AIDS is not expected to kill as many people as initially feared in the developing world, according to a new United Nations report. Sudan moved Tuesday to thwart the UN Human Rights Council from hearing its own report accusing Khartoum of playing a major role in orchestrating atrocities in Darfur. Taking a short walk seems to help smokers resist the temptation to light up, a review of studies concludes. A computer program may be more accurate than loved ones at predicting how patients who are incapacitated wish to be treated. A metallic liquid used in diagnostic imaging such as MRIs has been linked to a rare and potentially fatal skin disease, Health Canada said Tuesday. In the wake of two major amalgamations of Canadian media companies in the past year, the federal broadcasting regulator plans to look at ways to preserve a "diversity of voices" in the broadcasting system. The historical war epic 300 has been criticized as an attack on Iranian culture by government authorities in Tehran. The Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children celebrates its 10th anniversary with a program that includes a tribute to the long-running Degrassi TV series and a retrospective of Canadian children's films. Viacom Inc. on Tuesday slapped video-sharing website YouTube and its owner Google Inc. with a $1 billion US lawsuit alleging massive copyright infringment.
Aging may seem both inconvenient and inevitable to humans, but a new study suggests single-cell organisms — and possibly other organisms — adopted aging as part of a more successful reproductive strategy. A European company opened a factory on Tuesday that will mass produce electronic circuitry using industrial-size inkjet printers to spray intricate patterns onto super-thin surfaces, a technique that will create a cheaper alternative to silicon chips. Stock indexes in Canada and the United States lost ground sharply on Tuesday as the rate of late mortgage payments in the U.S. hit three-year highs and the rate of foreclosures hit a record high.
Hundreds of reporters from Canada, Britain, continental Europe and the U.S. began arriving in Chicago on Tuesday for the opening of the trial of Conrad Black on Wednesday morning.
Algoma Steel on Tuesday said talks about a possible takeover by Germany's second-largest steel company, Salzgitter AG, have been terminated. Unreasonably high security and rent fees at Canadian airports are gouging travellers and airlines alike, the head of an international aviation organization says. New questions have been raised about unusual patterns in the video displays of slot machines in Ontario. McDonald's is breaking its exclusivity deal with Coca-Cola, introducing select bottles of Pepsi beverages at certain U.S. restaurants.
Brent Burns scored with 36 seconds left in overtime as the Minnesota Wild beat the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 on Tuesday. Mats Sundin had one goal and one assist as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 on Tuesday. Saskatoon's Stefanie Lawton scored two in the 10th end to nip defending champion Cathy King of Edmonton 6-5 at the Canada Cup of Curling on Tuesday.
Keywords: American Idol, Evening News, Nightly News, United States, Brian Williams, Human Rights
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