World News Tonight Television Program

ABC's "World News" edged ahead in the evening news ratings last week, the first time it has beaten "NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" this season. With an average of 9.7 million viewers, the Charles Gibson-anchored newscast outstripped NBC's audience of 9.52 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Third-place "CBS Evening News" attracted almost 8 million viewers, the most since Katie Couric's debut as anchor.

ABC's "World News" drew the largest audience among evening network news shows during the February sweeps period, the newscast's first such win in 11 years. The program, anchored by Charles Gibson, averaged 9.67 million viewers last month, edging out "NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" by 111,000 viewers. "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" trailed the competition with 7.58 million viewers.

A few months after rival NBC did it once, ABC News says it will air four editions of "World News" with a single sponsor next month, freeing up five extra minutes for news on each broadcast. ABC has sent reporter Bill Weir traveling for a special series on those days. He'll go to Kiribati, a Pacific island nation that is seeing the effects of global warming, and to Zambia, to report on efforts to reduce infant and maternal mortality. NBC's "Nightly News" aired a broadcast on Dec.

ABC's "World News" is continuing to challenge "NBC Nightly News" for the title of top-rated evening newscast, winning the most viewers in the key May sweeps ratings period for the first time in 11 years. The ABC evening newscast, anchored by Charles Gibson, attracted an average of 7.95 million viewers for the survey period, beating out NBC's Brian Williams, who drew an average of 7.30 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

If the events of the last two years had unfolded differently, Charles Gibson would already be three weeks into retirement, readying for a trip this fall with his wife to Australia and New Zealand. Instead, the 64-year-old newsman is helming the year's top-rated network evening broadcast, whose steady audience gains have drawn attention from some unexpected quarters. Perhaps the most startling came from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S.

The new version of ABC's "World News Tonight" officially premieres tonight with co-anchor Bob Woodruff reporting from Tehran, launching a new format that will likely have him and co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas in different cities on most nights. Vargas, who spent a week last month in Iraq, will anchor the broadcast from New York this week while Woodruff reports on Iran's nuclear weapons program, among other topics. The two were named to replace the late anchor Peter Jennings in early December.

If you've tuned into ABC's "World News Tonight" on the West Coast in recent days, you've seen some stories that viewers in the rest of the country didn't get in their broadcasts. Last Thursday, it was a piece on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's state of the state address. The next day, there was an account of Google's announcement of its new video and software offerings at the Consumer Electronics Trade Show in Las Vegas. On Monday, it was a segment on Mississippi Gov.

Two weeks after launching a Western edition of its evening newscast, ABC plans to broadcast "World News Tonight" from California. Elizabeth Vargas is scheduled to anchor the show this evening from L.A., where she will interview Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, while her co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, will do the program from San Francisco. On Friday, Woodruff will anchor from Google's Mountain View headquarters, Vargas from L.A.

The last time ABC's Elizabeth Vargas saw her co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, he and his producers had their suitcases with them and were readying to leave the newsroom, bound on a week-and-a-half-long swing through Israel and Iraq. "I was envious -- I wanted to go," Vargas recalled in an interview. "I was sort of joking with him, 'I can't believe you guys are going without me!'

ABC's "World News Tonight" saw a boost in its ratings in the days after anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq. The newscast drew an average viewership of more than 9.3 million people between Jan. 30 and Feb. 3, just 300,000 fewer than top-ranked "NBC Nightly News" and a boost of 7% over its season average. Until last week, the gap between the shows this season was averaging more than 1 million. NBC drew more than 9.