"Good Morning America" barely affects ratings

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-16 13:23
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LOS ANGELES – While the anchor change on ABC's "Good Morning America" created a lot of noise in the blogosphere for the past few weeks, the actual transition was rather quiet.

About 4.7 million viewers tuned in Monday morning for the debut of George Stephanopoulos on "GMA." That is close to the 4.8 million who watched Stephanopolous' predecessor Diane Sawyer's last day on the show Friday.

Both days, "GMA" trailed the morning leader, NBC's "Today," which averaged more than 5.9 million on Monday and 5.3 million on Friday. By comparison, Katie Couric's last day on "Today" in May 2006 was watched by more than 8 million viewers, and 6.9 million turned out to see the woman who replaced her, Meredith Vieira, on her first "Today" broadcast in September 2006.