ABC News ends NBC's long night win string

As it did in the morning two years ago, ABC News has broken a long-running winning streak by its rivals at NBC News.

ABC's "World News" beat NBC's "Nightly News" in viewership last week, only a month after David Muir took over as anchor from Diane Sawyer. NBC's Brian Williams-led newscast had ruled for 263 consecutive weeks, a streak that began in September 2009, and for 310 of the past 311 weeks.

Last week, ABC's broadcast averaged 8.42 million viewers, while NBC had 8.25 million, the Nielsen company said.

In 2012, ABC's "Good Morning America" broke an even longer winning streak in the morning by NBC's "Today" show. Now ABC consistently wins in the morning, a changing of the guard that has been particularly lucrative for the Disney Co.-owned network.

ABC has been creeping up in the evening ratings the past several months, often winning among the 25-to-54-year-old demographic that advertisers consider valuable, even though most evening news viewers are older than that.

NBC suggested its rival's ascension may be short-lived. The network said it was particularly hard hit last week by competition with the baseball playoffs because they had an impact on markets where "Nightly News" is stronger than "World News." For example, NBC said its ratings were off by 50 percent in Los Angeles on Friday, while the ABC newscast was down by only 4 percent.

NBC said it lost some 200,000 to 300,000 viewers last week in markets where local teams were in the baseball playoffs. ABC's margin of victory last week was 166,000.

-- AP