The aforementioned NYT story about the evening news race ran on page 1 this morning.

“The impact of that is enormous, just as the magnitude of this entire ratings event is,” an observer writes.

I think this graf is the most important one: “More notable has been the erosion in Mr. Williams’s lead over the last year. Erosion is not uncommon for the network newscasts, which have been steadily losing viewers. Still, Mr. Williams has lost an average of a little more than 570,000 viewers over the last year; Mr. Gibson’s audience has grown by just under 60,000 viewers.”

There’s one more important element: Katie Couric is essentially an also-ran. “It speaks volumes about Couric and the fact that CBS has all but failed in their effort to re-energize a morbid news division,” the observer adds…