It is the end of an era. After more than 16 years and 852 weeks, it
appears NBC’s morning-show winning streak has at long last been toppled.
According to preliminary Nielsen data, Good Morning America edged out Today by 13,000 viewers for the week ending April 13. GMA averaged 5,147,000 viewers vs. Today’s 5,134,000.Â
NBC still prevailed by 254,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic on which most news programming is sold. So a one-week win by GMA will not change the financial picture at Today. Still, it gives GMA long-sought bragging rights and fulfills an overriding goal of ABC News president Ben Sherwood, who was executive producer of GMA from 2004-06 before returning to ABC in December 2010 as president of the news division.
ABC News executives are cautiously optimistic that the numbers will
hold but stressed that they are preliminary. Final numbers will be in
Thursday.
