ABC beats Brian Williams' newscast in ratings Friday

AP reports:

Brian Williams took a pounding in the ratings for his final night on the air before stepping aside as NBC looks into misstatements made by its top anchor, although day-to-day variations in viewership make it difficult to conclude whether that was because news consumers were losing faith in him.

The Nielsen company said ABC's "World News Tonight" had 8.46 million viewers on Friday, while NBC's "Nightly News" had just under 8 million. It was two nights after Williams had apologized on the air for falsely claiming that he was in helicopter that had been hit by a grenade while in Iraq in 2003.

For this television season as a whole, Williams' newscast has led in the ratings by an average of roughly 600,000 viewers each night over ABC.

On Thursday, the night after Williams' apology, NBC beat ABC by about 800,000 viewers, Nielsen said.

Changes.