Nielsen issues corrected figures for ABC’s ‘World News,’ boosting its audience for last week

Nielsen corrects ABC’s ‘World News’ viewer total

NEW YORK — Nielsen’s recount for ABC’s “World News” last week has boosted its audience by about 800,000 viewers.

Nielsen Media Research reissued its report on Wednesday after ABC disputed the original figures released by Nielsen the day before.

Corrected figures for the week of June 8 show ABC’s “World News” averaged 6.99 million viewers (4.8 household rating, 11 share). It was the runner-up newscast to NBC’s “Nightly News,” with 8.27 million viewers (5.5 rating, 12 share). “CBS Evening News,” with 5.40 million viewers (3.7 rating, 8 share), was in third place.

Nielsen had originally said “World News” averaged 6.2 million viewers for the week, and that last Friday’s edition was watched by 4.1 million viewers, well below its Friday average of 7.3 million this year.

Friday marked TV’s digital transition, when analog signals were cut off and an estimated 2.5 percent of the nation’s TV homes lost their TV transmissions. Some ABC affiliates switched over from analog to digital before the midnight deadline, and their viewership was not credited properly in Nielsen’s initial report.

The Nielsen recount found the audience for “World News” last Friday was 6.34 million viewers.

Nielsen didn’t factor in “World News” broadcasts for Tuesday and Thursday of last week, when the program was pre-empted in much of the country for ABC’s coverage of the National Basketball Association finals. Similarly, NBC’s “Nightly News” is based on a three-day average (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). That newscast was widely pre-empted the other two days for NBC’s coverage of the National Hockey League finals.

A ratings point represents 1,145,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.5 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co.

On the Net:

www.nielsenmedia.com