The week of devastating news for Southern California was good ratings news for news organizations.

For the first three nights of last week in the 56 overnight markets metered by Nielsen Media Research, ABC’s"World News With Charles Gibson" was up 11 percent week-to-week,"NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" was up 7 percent and"CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" was up 10 percent.

Third-ranked"Evening News" posted its best Monday-through-Thursday delivery of this month-old season in the overnights, up 7 percent week-to-week. On KFMB-TV in San Diego, the first half of"Evening News" Tuesday night registered a 14.7 rating and 25 share, a 7.6 rating/14 share Wednesday and a 7.1/13 Thursday. The previous week’s average was a 5.4/11.

(The rating represents the percentage of the overall number of sets in the market that are tuned to a program. The share represents the percentage of sets in use that are tuned to that program.)

The cable news networks saw double-digit increases in viewership the first three days of last week. Fox News Channel averaged 1 million viewers for total-day, 264,000 of them in the news target demo of 25 to 54 years old. CNN averaged 681,000 viewers, 251,000 in the 25 to 54 demo; MSNBC averaged 324,000 viewers, 125,000 in the target demo; and CNN Headline News averaged 260,000 viewers, 103,000 of them in the demo.