In her first week in the anchor chair, Katie Couric guided The CBS Evening News to a first-place finish in the network-news race. In the shortened Labor Day week, Evening News averaged 10.2 million viewers, up from an average 6.4 million for the same week last year, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen Media Research.
NBC placed second with 7.13 million viewers, down from an average 9.3 million last year, however the network only carried Nightly News With Brian Williams on three nights last week due to the opening NFL football game last Thursday.
ABC's World News With Charles Gibson finished the four-night week with an average 6.9 million viewers, down from 8.9 million a year ago.
CBS said it was Evening News' largest margin of victory over NBC since February 1994 and the largest gap between CBS and ABC in evening news since 1987.
CBS also won the key 25 to 54 year old demo, posting an average 2.8 rating to NBC and ABC's 1.9 ratings in the demo.
