ABC News

While NBC readies its decision on the future of news anchor Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News continues to trend down in key viewers TV advertisers want most. But it maintains higher overall viewership. In the most recent reporting week in June, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir earned 1.97 million average key 25-54 viewers for the week ending June 1, up 2% versus the same week a year ago.

A press briefing Tuesday with White House press secretary Josh Earnest was interrupted shortly before 2 p.m. by a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the briefing room. Reporters and photographers filed out, only to return around 2:45 p.m. after the Secret Service had swept the room. Once White House reporters were back in their seats, the questions to Earnest about evacuation protocol began. Jonathan Karl of ABC News had a very pointed question/allegation: “Hey Josh … who covered up the cameras in this room? ‘Cause the cameras were covered up or pointed down.”

As NBC News considers the future of its nightly newscast, its chief rival is celebrating an historic ratings victory. ABC’s World News Tonight currently ranks first among adults ages 25-54, narrowly edging NBC’s long-dominant Nightly News in the demographic for the first time in 19 years.

George Stephanopoulos said today on Good Morning America that his $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation, made in three increments to the foundation started by his one-time boss, former President Bill Clinton, were a mistake.

ABC News anchor George voluntarily stepped away from the Feb. 6 GOP presidential debate, ABC News said Thursday. It is one of nine debates sanctioned by the Republican National Committee. The co-host of Good Morning America and host of the Sunday morning public affairs program This Week earlier had apologized for not disclosing his contributions to the Clinton Foundation to his employer and viewers.

The news anchor said that he believed his contributions to the Clinton Foundation were a matter of public record. “However,” he said, “in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on the air during the recent news stories about the foundation.”

The ABC News correspondent will be honored for his contributions to journalism and freedom of the press in a ceremony on Sept. 19 at the RTDNA’s Excellence in Journalism 2015 convention in Orlando, Fla.

Dan Silver, an Emmy-winning producer who spent eight years at ESPN Films, is joining ABC News as executive producer of digital. At the sport cabler’s documentary and film unit, Silver “has worked on nearly every content format conceivable — short-form, long-form, digital, broadcast and film,” ABC News President James Goldston said today.

ABC News today named Reena Ninan has been named co-anchor of World News Now. She joins T.J. Holmes as the overnight morning show’s co-anchor; Ninan will also be co-anchoring America This Morning.

ABC News will air a two-hour interview between Diane Sawyer and Bruce Jenner, the former Olympian whose quest for sexual identity has been the subject of much speculation in recent weeks. The special’s air date falls on the second day of TV’s May sweeps period, April 24.

NBC’s Lester Holt may be the most-watched evening-news anchor in the United States, but for advertisers, ABC’s David Muir is emerging as a favorite. Muir’s World News Tonight broadcast on ABC has won more of the viewers advertisers covet for three consecutive weeks, a situation that threatens to undermine NBC Nightly News while that program is in transition.

The ABC News Washington D.C. Bureau has laid off a dozen employees. The plan, according to Bureau Chief Jonathan Greenberger, is to “shift away from platform-based teams and towards content-based teams, which will be responsible for reporting and storytelling across all of our platforms.”

It’s a big news for television and journalism between the Robert Durst arrest after his HBO documentary and Watchup adding Tribune’s cache of local news to its app. Not to be left out, ABC News went ahead and announced that it’s going to be available on Roku devices as of right now.

ABC and Yahoo are expanding their relationship highlighted by Katie Couric’s reports being distributed across ABC News and Yahoo talent hitting Good Morning America. Beginning today, content across Disney/ABC Television Group will be featured on Yahoo. On March 16, Good Morning America will launch a new “Yahoo Your Day” daily series, featuring top Yahoo editors.

Byron Pitts is replacing Dan Abrams as Nightline anchor; Abrams will remain ABC News chief legal analyst.

A day after launching a daily Facebook newscast called Facecast, ABC News announced a new initiative, GoStream, which lets ABC News staffers upload live streaming coverage of news in real time.

The “Facecast” will usually be posted in the early afternoon, and was set to start today. ABC said Facebook users will see the report in their news stream if they have “liked” World News Tonight, or else will be able to find it on the newscast’s Facebook page. ABC said it was the first newscast created specifically for social media by an evening news anchor.

Friday on 20/20, ABC aired a Brian Ross investigation called “Recall Roulette.” The story is about what ABC is calling the “flawed government recall system” and may seem familiar to some local viewers. Pieces were used as part of a partnership with the investigative teams of 17 ABC affiliates.

ABC’s David Muir is a TV natural, in his element alone at a news desk but more so when out and about doing things that networks anchors just didn’t used to do.

ABC News has announced plans for its coverage of the elections, notably combining its on-air broadcast with the digital coverage. Instead of having an entirely different program for second screen viewers, it will be the same cast of characters, same lineup.

ABC News’ SVP of communications Jeffrey Scheider will leave the company next month to launch his own PR firm. Julie Townsend, the VP of communications, will step in to replace him.

News ratings for the week beginning Sept. 29 were affected by a software error that created miscalculations of television viewership dating back to last March, so the previously announced victory of ABC’s World News Tonight last week over NBC’s Nightly News was incorrect.

The ABC News veteran assumes her new role immediately, replacing Almin Karamehmedovic, who was recently named executive producer of ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir. Sherwood had been working as a senior producer with 20/20.

Jonathan Greenberger, the 31-year-old executive producer of ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, has been promoted to Washington bureau chief and vice president, sources say. He will remain EP of This Week.

Muir, 40, joins NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and Scott Pelley of the CBS Evening News at one of the three jobs generally considered the pinnacle of American broadcast news. Muir is also a generation younger than the 55-year-old Williams and Pelley, 57.

Tom Cibrowski will become a top deputy to news division President James Goldston, while Michael Corn will replace Cibrowski as senior executive producer at Good Morning America and Almin Karamehmedovic will become that show’s top producer.