“Good Morning America” extends its winning streak to nine months finishing last week at #1 in both total viewers and younger viewers. Compared to the same week last year “GMA” was the only show to grow both measurements: up +12% in total viewers and +3% in younger viewers.

Last week, NBC’s “Today” was 900,000 viewers behind “GMA;” last year the once-dominant morning show was behind by 90,000. “Today” was down vs. last year -4% in total viewers / -5% in younger viewers. “CBS This Morning” saw the most total viewer growth in the morning: +13%, but the show was down in younger viewers: -4%.

The averages for the week of May 6:

• Total Viewers: ABC: 5.821M / NBC: 4.905M / CBS: 2.985M

• A25-54 viewers: ABC: 2.127M / NBC: 2.097M / CBS: 1.010M

ABC’s “Good Morning America” wins another week with a nearly 1 million total viewer lead over NBC’s “Today” bringing its winning streak to 8 months. It has also been #1 in the demo in 42 of the last 44 weeks.

“GMA” is up compared to the same week last year: +9% in total viewers, and flat in the demo. “Today” is down double digits in both: -11% / -14%. While “CBS This Morning” showed the most gains: +12% in total viewers and +3% in the demo. Last week, “CBS This Morning” trailed “Today” by 1.6 million viewers. Last year, the difference was 2.5 million viewers, a gap closure of 36%.

The averages for the week of April 29:

• Total Viewers: ABC: 5.617M / NBC: 4.663M / CBS: 3.014M

• A25-54 viewers: ABC: 2.050M / NBC: 1.947M / CBS: 1.099M

After losing in the A25-54 demographic the week of April 15, ABC’s “Good Morning America” was back on top in both Total Viewers and the demo for the week of April 22.

“GMA” beat “Today”  by +819,000 Total Viewers and +66,000 A25-54 viewers.

But only “CBS This Morning” showed growth in both ratings measurements compared the same week last year, up +12% in Total Viewers and +3% in the demo. “GMA” was up +8% in Total Viewers but down -2% in the A25-54 demographic, while “Today” was down -4% and -9%, respectively.

The averages for the week of April 22:

• Total Viewers: ABC: 5.739M / NBC: 4.920M / CBS: 2.977M

• A25-54 viewers: ABC: 2.092M / NBC: 2.026M / CBS: 1.062M

Though the critics have skewered his first book, Brian Stelter chooses to see the coffee cup as half full.

“Honestly, I appreciate the feedback,” says Stelter, 27, author of Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, and a media reporter for the New York Times. (Full disclosure: Stelter founded TVNewser when he was a college student)

“I’m not making this up,” he continues. “I want to learn how to be a better writer and reporter. I do think normal readers come away really happy, really entertained.”

‘Normal readers’ probably don’t include a trio of power players, past and present, from NBC. ‘Morning’ paints a less than flattering portrait of ‘Today’ co-anchor Matt Lauer; his former boss, Jim Bell; and ex-NBC News president Steve Capus.

All were involved, to varying degrees, in the ham-handed – and excruciatingly public — ouster of Lauer’s co-anchor, Ann Curry, according to the book. Bell had dubbed it ‘Operation Bambi,’ not knowing, of course, that Curry would come out looking as innocent and victimized as the white-tailed fawn in his title.

Lauer is the clear villain of the piece, prompting Entertainment Weekly to accuse Stelter of having a ‘vendetta’ against the mega-millionaire anchor.

Stelter labels the accusation as ‘preposterous.’

Read more

NBC’s “Today” has reclaimed the top spot in the A25-54 demo for the week of April 15, winning by 19,000 viewers. This is the first weekly demo win for “Today” since the week of Jan. 28.

During this same week last year “Today” was on top in both Total Viewers and younger viewers, which came a week after “GMA” had broken the NBC show’s 16-year winning streak. “Today” is still down -11% in the demo vs. last year, while “GMA” has added younger viewers: +5%.

“GMA” still leads in Total Viewers and also grew from last year: +12% while “Today” lost viewers: -4%.

The big winner again is “CBS This Morning” which, while still trailing by two million viewers, is up +24% in viewership vs. last year.

The averages for the week of April 15:

• Total Viewers: ABC: 5.623M / NBC: 5.047M / CBS: 3.148M

• A25-54 viewers: ABC: 2.044M / NBC: 2.063M / CBS: 1.094M

As Ed Bark rightly pointed out in his review of “Top of the Morning” Brian Stelter got the most access from “Good Morning America,” spending countless days and one overnight shift embedded with the program. (It was the night last May, as the “Dancing with the Stars” after-party was being planned and the show’s overnight producer tried his damndest to get a dog — made famous for standing on things — on a cross-country overnight flight. Spoiler alert: He fails.)

That’s not a surprise since the ABC morning show had the best story to tell — breaking the “Today” show’s 16-year winning streak a year ago this month. It should also come as no surprise, then, that Stelter’s first network interview was with “GMA.”

“Here at ‘GMA’ we report the news, we rarely try to find ourselves at the center of it,” George Stephanopoulos said introducing Dan Harris‘ 2-minute story.

There was no “happy chat” after the story, when an anchor might normally add, “I read it! Great book!” Instead Stephanopoulos cracked wise about Stelter admitting he gets 9-10 hours sleep some nights — a luxury the millionaire morning anchors do not have.

In his first interview for the book, Stelter told me he hopes to go on all the morning shows. He’ll be on “CBS This Morning” tomorrow, but not to talk just about the book, but also about the media coverage of last week’s events in Boston. After reading “Top of the Morning,” something tells me getting on the “Today” show will be a tougher sell. But it would make for great TV. Something these shows are always looking for.

New York Times reporter Brian Stelter‘s new book is reviewed by his own New York Times. Former Dallas Morning News TV critic Ed Bark, known as Uncle Barky, writes, “Top of the Morning” “ends up being like a breakfast made not quite to order.”

The eggs over easy have one hard yolk, and the bacon’s a little limp. The toast is well-buttered but burned, and the coffee’s short on heat. Edible? Yes. Fulfilling? Not quite.

“Sometimes Mr. Stelter seems to throw out verbiage mainly for his own amusement,” Bark writes, adding, “He knows how to turn a phrase.”

“Top of the Morning” ends up being a fairly engaging book that might set some industry tongues wagging. Tasty tidbits are served, but nothing close to Mr. Carter’s big-buzz revelation in “The Late Shift” that Mr. Leno hid in a closet to eavesdrop on a conference call in which top NBC brass discussed replacing him with Mr. Letterman as the “Tonight Show” host. If Ms. Curry ever did anything like that, well, she’s not telling.

Brian Stelter, who launched the blog you’re reading almost 10 years ago, is now a published author. “Top of the Morning,” out today, lays bare a tumultuous year which saw one anchor pack her bags, another face a serious health issue, a ratings leader fall — and lose a quarter of its audience — and an entirely new show launch. In his first interview for the book, Stelter tells us about the secrecy behind “Top of the Morning,” the access he got, and what he thinks about being called Matt Lauer‘s nemesis.

• Part II, tomorrow: What happens when Brian Stelter Tweets something he shouldn’t?

Brian Stelter‘s new book “Top of the Morning,” about the morning show wars, excerpted over the weekend in The New York Times Magazine and this morning in Playbook, is out tomorrow. To get an inside account, Stelter had to get inside the networks as the battles were waged in what would be a tumultuous year for all three networks.

So, what kind of access did he get to the shows, anchors and producers? In “A note about sourcing” at the end of the book, Stelter writes that his visits to the control rooms and studios, “shaped the book in big and small ways.”

“NBC, ABC, and CBS insisted that most of these visits be off the record, with the understanding that they’d decide which quotes could be placed on the record later,” he writes. “I agreed to the restriction, knowing it was the only way I’d receive any access to the otherwise sealed-off studios, control rooms and production offices of the shows.”

ABC scrubbed a few curse words from producers’ mouths but allowed virtually every other quote. NBC was more heavy-handed every one of [former "Today" EP] Jim Bell‘s quotes from my control room visits were kept “off the record.” So were descriptions of Bell’s body language and his demeanor, descriptions of other staffers reacting to Bell, and some quotes from Ann Curry. NBC approved most of the rest of the control room material. Once in a while, on particularly sensitive days when the PR apparatuses of NBC and ABC denied access to their studios, I simply peered into their street-level windows like a tourist.”

More from Stelter tomorrow in Part I of our MediaBeat interview.

A year after breaking the “Today” show’s 852-week streak, ABC’s “Good Morning America” continues to win the mornings. It was this week last year that “GMA” got its first weekly since 1995, resulting in a tumultuous year for long-dominant “Today” (More on that later).

Compared to the same week last year “GMA” is up +6 in viewers while “Today” is down -6%. The big gainer for the week was “CBS This Morning” up a whopping +20% in viewers and up +5 in the younger demo.

In the demo “GMA” also saw growth: +4%, holding a +63,000 viewer gap on “Today” which was down -11% vs. the same week last year.

The averages for the week of April 8:

• Total Viewers: ABC: 5.494M / NBC: 4.834M / CBS: 3.004M

• A25-54 viewers: ABC: 2.045M / NBC: 1.982M / CBS: 1.039M