During the week before Christmas, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” finished first in total viewers and among the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that is of the most interest to advertisers in news programming.

In recent weeks, ABC’s “World News With Charles Gibson” has been edging or tying “Nightly” in the demographic.

According to data from Nielsen Media Research for the week of Dec. 18, “Nightly News” averaged 9.48 million viewers and a 2.4 rating/9 share in the demo. “Nightly’s” total viewership was off 1 percent from 9.55 million vs. the comparable week a year ago.

“World News” averaged 8.53 million total viewers and a 2.2/9 in the 25-to-54 demo. The flagship ABC News show was the only one of the three programs that could point to any year-to-year improvement in total viewers, up 1 percent from 8.48 million viewers.

“CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” averaged 7.44 million viewers and a 1.9/7 in the demo. Year to year, “Evening News” is down 2 percent from a year ago, when Bob Schieffer was keeping the anchor seat warm and the average total viewership was at 7.59 million.

In the 25-to-54 demo, all three flagship newscasts were off compared to a year ago, “Evening News” by 1 percent, “Nightly” by 9 percent and “World News” by 10 percent.

A ratings point represents the percentage of TV homes that were tuned to the program. The share is the percentage of all sets in use that were tuned to the show.

(Editor: Gilbert)