The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric continues to defy the odds, which started to play in her favor during her presidential campaign coverage. If you believed the skeptics, Couric might have been gone from the show by now. But not only is she still front and center, her third-place show is gaining on #2 World News with Charles Gibson. (NBC Nightly News is solidly in first place, coming in #1 for 18 weeks straight.)
For the week of Feb. 2, Evening News trailed World News by 1.5 million viewers. During the week of Feb. 4, 2008 Evening News finished 2.28 million viewers behind World News, meaning CBS closed the gap by 780,000 viewers, year-over-year.
Then last week there was similar movement. ABC drew 8.19 million viewers to CBS’s 6.75 million. While both newscasts were down year-to-year, ABC was down more, losing 1.25 million viewers compared to the week of Feb. 11, 2008. The Couric broadcast closed the gap by more than one million viewers. Last year the gap was 2.46 million; last week it was 1.44 million.