Just back from Charlotte covering the DNC, George Stephanopoulos got some good news this morning. The ABC News anchor had two number one shows last week: “Good Morning America” was #1 in the mornings, and “This Week” was #1 Sunday, Sept. 2.

“GMA” has been consistently winning the mornings, and did again last week. Meanwhile, the Sunday public affairs show race has been a back and forth between CBS’s “Face the Nation” and the longtime #1 NBC’s “Meet the Press.” CBS had slightly lower clearance due to the U.S. Open.

“This Week” edged “Meet the Press” by +2,000 Total Viewers and +65,000 younger viewers. The lead on “Face the Nation” was 482,000 Total Viewers / 106,000 demo viewers.

Today ABC News and Univision formally “sealed the deal” so to speak, having completed the agreement to form a joint venture cable news channel. The companies have been hammering out the details since May, when the tentative agreement was announced.

Not coincidentally, a number of details about the upcoming cable news channel have leaked as part of an application granting it $10.5 million in incentives from Miami-Dade County and the State of Florida. The incentives are meant to ensure that the channel will be based out of Miami. The application in question indicates that if the incentives were not approved, the company would consider basing its operations out of New York, Los Angeles or Houston.

The new company (identified as “Confidential Project ‘Vision’” in official documents obtained by TVNewser) says it will add 346 jobs in the county, with an average salary of over $81,000 a year. That is in addition to the 137 people currently employed by one of the parent companies there. The expected capital investment cost for the company is expected to be $275 million. As we have previously reported, the channel will launch online this year, and on TV next year.

The application does not mention Univision or ABC by name, but the description of the companies leaves little to the imagination. South Florida Business Journal‘s Brian Bandell has details:
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The New York Times reports on a relatively recent political strategy, being utilized heavily by both the Obama and Romney campaigns: quote approval. Specifically, campaign staffers are briefing reporters, who then have to ask the campaigns which quotes they can use.

The practice actually presents a tremendous opportunity for TV news outlets, as mentioned briefly in the piece.

Both presidential campaigns are keenly aware of what can happen when they speak too freely. Damaging sound bites can live on in the news cycle for days. Mr. Obama’s remark last month during a televised news conference that “the private sector is doing fine” landed almost immediately in attack ads. And Eric Fehrnstrom’s “Etch A Sketch” comment on CNN, about softening some of the harder positions Mr. Romney took during the primaries, continues to haunt the Romney campaign five months later.

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Here’s an inside look at ABC News.  In this episode of mediabistroTV’s “Cubes,” David Muir, weekend anchor of “World News,” gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the ABC News headquarters.

The ABC complex on Manhattan’s upper west side is home to ABC News, “Live! with Kelly,” and local New York station WABC.  Diane Sawyer also makes a cameo in the video (as do her dozens of Emmys).

For more mediabistroTV videos, check out our YouTube channel, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

They won the 2011-2012 season, so it figures “Nightline” would also be the #1 show in late night for the second quarter.

In numbers just released, the ABC News show topped NBC’s “The Tonight Show” by the largest gaps in 17 years: in A25-54 demo (by +180,000 viewers), in the A18-49 demo (by +199,000) and in Total Viewers (by +333,000).

“Nightline” also won the week of June 18. Those numbers after the jump…

ABC’s ratings are based on a 25-minute broadcast, while CBS and NBC are based on approximately :50 minutes (prior to the final national commercial break of each program).

Q2 2012:

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Like its weekday counterpart, the Saturday edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America” has continued to make inroads against the Saturday edition of NBC’s “Today.”

For the month of April, Saturday “Good Morning America” pulled ahead of Saturday “Today” in younger viewers, though “Today” won in Total Viewers. This is the opposite of the weekday ratings race, where “GMA” has topped “Today” twice in Total Viewers but still trails in the demographic.

“GMA” is also the only Saturday morning show to improve on its year-ago averages, up +4% in Total Viewers and +2% in the demographic. “CBS This Morning” is down -6% in Total Viewers and -3% in A25-54 viewers, while “Today” is down -17% and -27%, respectively.

The averages for Saturdays in April:

• Total Viewers: NBC: 3.49M / ABC: 3.29M / CBS: 1.68M

• A25-54 viewers: NBC: 1.16M / ABC: 1.20M / CBS: 627K

ABC News said the hour between 11 p.m. ET and midnight Sunday, when news broke of the death of Osama Bin Laden, was its largest hour ever in terms of traffic, including its website, wireless site, and apps for the iPad, iPhone, and other smartphones.

The network added that Monday was the highest-trafficked day in the history of ABCNews.com, with a big push coming from its exclusive video from inside Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, which totaled more than 1 million views.

ABC News Digital senior vice president Joe Ruffolo said:

It has been an incredible day for ABC News, showing the enormous power of our newsgathering operations and our ability to translate and deliver that experience on-air, online, on phones, and wherever our users are. ABCNews.com was once again a leading destination in digital news, offering our users exclusive content, an enormous breadth and depth of reporting, and compelling video experiences.

Diane Sawyer’s beverages of choice are green tea and sugar-free Red Bull. Her assistant’s name is Jill, and executive producer Jon Banner’s assistant is Tess.

More behind-the-scenes nuggets like these can be found on Sawyer’s Facebook page, where she announced the initiative by writing:

Hi Facebook world. Ready for something fun? Check out our new social experiment this week– #WorldNewsFeed. Meet my tag team — we’ll be taking you behind the scenes and we want to hear everything you’re curious about.

ABC News Digital is looking to strengthen its search-engine optimization and publicity with the respective hires of John Shehata and Michelle Levi.

Shehata is an SEO expert who had been with Advance Internet. He will be executive director of search and social media for ABC News Digital.

Levi joins as publicist for digital platforms. She had been media manager for Politico and worked at CBS News in DC before that.

“John brings the incredibly unique perspective that combines a detailed technical background and superb editorial insights,” says ABCNews.com executive producer Ed O’Keefe. “His groundbreaking work in search and social media has made him one of the nation’s foremost experts in a dynamic and challenging field. We are enormously proud to welcome John and Michelle to the ABC News Digital leadership team.”

ABC News Digital senior vice president Paul Slavin discussed online video news at the Beet.TV Video Strategy Summit Thursday, saying digital video at ABC News is “exploding, presenting a limitless demand” for video journalism, and adding that the challenge is to create more video that is inexpensive, economical, and high-quality.