NEW YORK: ABC scored an additional 800,000 viewers for its evening newscast last week after a recount by Nielsen Media Research, reports indicate. The average audience for “ABC World News” over the last week was undercounted by around 800,000 viewers each night. The recount boosted the average nightly audience for the newscast from 6.2 million to nearly 7 million. Nielsen issued the results of its recount yesterday.
The DTV transition was blamed, according to AP. Nielsen originally counted 4.1 million viewers for “World News” on Friday, the day of the transition. The newscast averages around 7.3 million viewers. The recount yielded 6.34 million viewers.
Around 2.5 million homes were thought to be left without TV service by Friday’s transition from analog to all-digital broadcasting. Some households also lost specific channels, a phenomenon primarily related to stations that moved from the UHF to VHF radio frequency band.
