Barbara Walters' mission in moving to ABC was to pull the network out of last place in the evening news sweepstakes. In two months on the job, she has delivered 300 news items, conducted 17 on-air interviews, and smiled bravely through 38 of Co-Anchorman Harry Reasoner's sign-off witticisms. The result: ABC is still last and, in fact, further behind the leader, CBS.
In the nervous, numbers-obsessed world of television programming, there are two gauges of success: Nielsen ratings, which measure popularity in percentages of all TV-owning households, and audience shares, which express the preferences of only those households with sets turned...
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