The Nielsen company said that ABC’s broadcast had 8.46 million viewers on Friday, while NBC’s “Nightly News” had just under 8 million. Williams anchored the newscast for NBC.
While it’s not unusual for ABC to win some individual days in the ratings, NBC has been consistently winning on a week-to-week basis. On the previous Friday evening, ABC also won in the ratings by almost 400,000 viewers. News of Williams’ Iraq tale came out on Wednesday of last week.