• The Associated Press, Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:30 AM

Nielsen Media Research recounted its figures for last week's ABC "World News" and subsequently boosted the show's audience by a sizable 800,000 viewers. Nielsen issued the corrected information yesterday after ABC disputed the original figures released on Tuesday.

ABC's "World News" averaged 6.99 million viewers, says the corrected report. It was the runner-up newscast to NBC's "Nightly News," with 8.27 million viewers and "CBS Evening News," with 5.40 million viewers. Nielsen had originally said "World News" averaged 6.2 million viewers for the week. It also said last Friday's edition was watched by 4.1 million viewers, well below this year's Friday average of 7.3 million. The Nielsen recount found the audience for "World News" last Friday was 6.34 million viewers.

Friday marked TV's digital transition, when analog signals were cut off and an estimated 2.5% of the nation's TV homes lost their TV transmissions. Some ABC affiliates switched over from analog to digital before the midnight deadline, and their viewership was not credited properly in Nielsen's initial report.

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