Fresh off weekly wins by “Good Morning America” over NBC’s “Today” show, ABC News is touting gains by its “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” during the first week of the fall season.

The news division reports that “World News” averaged 7.39 million total viewers and a 1.5 rating/6 share/1.80 million in the key news demo of adults 25-54, according to Nielsen Media Research for the week of Sept. 24.

The ABC broadcast narrowed the gap with market leader “NBC Nightly News” to just 42,000 total viewers, slashing 94% of the gap from a year ago, ABC News reports.

Additionally, “ABC World News” was the most-watched evening newscast, in total viewers, on two nights of the week — Tuesday and Friday. And it was No. 1 on Friday in adults 25-54. The week ranked as the most-watched premiere week for “World News” in four years.

“’ABC World News’ was up week-to-week in both total viewers (+1%) and adults 25-54 (+2%) — 7.32 million and 1.77 million, respectively, [from the week of Sept. 17]. ‘World News’ stood as the only evening news program to grow in both measures over the prior week as the ‘CBS Evening News’ was mixed (+5%/-1%) and ‘NBC Nightly News’ was down (-5%/-4%). Further, ‘World News’ has increased its total viewer count week to week in six of the past seven weeks,” ABC News reports.

“World News” was up 2% for the week in total viewers from its premiere week a year ago. The ABC broadcast topped “NBC Nightly News” by 129,000 total viewers on Tuesday (Sept. 25) — delivering 7.935 million to 7.806 million for NBC — and beat NBC again on Friday (Sept. 28), by 587,000 total viewers — 6.756 million to 6.169 million. “ABC World News” was the most-watched evening newscast on those two nights.

It was the first time in more than a year, since the week of Aug. 15, 2011, that “ABC World News” beat NBC’s newscast twice during the course of a week of regular telecasts.

The ABC newscast aslo topped “CBS Evening News” — by 1.24 million total viewers and by 157,000 adults 25-54.