Katie Couric cruised to an easy ratings victory on her second night as “CBS Evening News” anchor, too.
The broadcast, mired in third place before her arrival, had a 7.0 rating and 14 share Wednesday. ABC’s “World News” was second with a 5.3 rating and 10 share, while NBC’s “Nightly News” was at 4.9 and 10, according to a Nielsen Media Research measurement of the nation’s 55 biggest cities.
Nielsen was expected to update its ratings later Thursday to show the nation as a whole. NBC was third in the metered markets for Couric’s debut on Tuesday, but climbed to second when the national numbers were released.
While Couric’s audience was down from Tuesday, the second win was an encouraging sign for CBS. Most of the networks say it will take weeks or months before a true picture of the new viewing habits emerge.
Couric’s broadcast on Wednesday featured her interview with President Bush.
A ratings point represents 1,102,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 110.2 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.