With the Nielsen Fast National numbers for Friday just released, “Good Morning America” is in a position to win another week in the morning show ratings race. For the week of April 23, “GMA” has a +165,000 (preliminary) Total Viewer lead over the “Today” show. The win comes just as the May ratings period begins and as the regular anchor teams were in place, except for Friday, when Matt Lauer was off. But in an interesting twist, “Today” won the day Friday drawing +120,000 more viewers than “GMA” with Carl Quintanilla sitting in for Lauer.
When “GMA” beat “Today” the week of April 9, the first time in more than 16 years, Lauer was off all week.
In the A25-54 demo, “Today” is poised to continue its streak to 887 weeks at #1, although “GMA” continues to close the gap, with just 94,000 viewers (preliminary) separating the two shows. That’s the smallest gap since the week of Nov. 27, 1995.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week, “GMA” had significant leads on “Today” of 404,000, 288,000 and 283,000 viewers, respectively.
Final ratings will come Thursday.