Tracking The ABC/CBS Evening News Gap

Some folks are getting awfully excited about the evening news race between ABC and NBC. Drudge has posted CBS’s press release verbatim and calls it a “showdown.”

The gap between World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News definitely narrowed last week, according to Nielsen data. In the ten weeks since February sweeps, an average of 486,000 total viewers separated the two shows. The week of April 24 was a perfect example: ABC had 7,530,000 viewers and CBS had 7,040,000. Last week (May 1-5), the gap between the two nets decreased to 310,000. But it wasn’t because CBS gained viewers last week — it’s because ABC lost them, to the tune of 210,000.

CBS is undoubtedly gaining ground in the evening news race, but let’s wait and see if last week’s gap was an aberration or a sign of things to come…