Sherri Shepherd, Not Sarah Palin, Pushes 'Good Morning America' Past 'Today'

By Eric Randall | The Atlantic Wire51 mins ago

For the first time in 16 years, it appears ABC'sGood Morning America may have finally beaten NBC'sThe Today Show in weekly ratings, but it wasn't the during theKatie Couric-Sarah Palin death-match.The New York Times's Brian Steltercredits the inimitable Sherri Shepherd, a member of The View's day-time debating panel. He writes:

Today won the first two days of the week, but GMAcame back to win on Wednesday, the morning after an ABC star, Sherri Shepherd, was voted off the prime-time ABC show Dancing With the Stars. Ms. Shepherd was interviewed on GMA on Wednesday morning.

The Nielsen ratings are preliminary and the margin is extraordinarily slim, so Today may retain the lead once the final numbers are tallied. GMA averaged 5,147,000 total viewers last week! , which is 13,000 more than the Today's average of5,134,000. If this were an election, we'd be talking about a candidate winning by a margin of 0.13 percent.Truth be told, however, it's hard to credit one single seismic morning TV event for finally pushing GMA over the top. Also, tAs Stelter reports, the ABC show has been slowly gaining on its peer for a long time.Anyway, congrats to the ABC team.

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