WBBM late news climbing in ratings

WBBM-Channel 2's late news is moving up in the ratings.

With one night to go in the Nieslen October ratings book, WBBM's 10 p.m. news is now tied for second place with WMAQ-Channel 5's late news, which has taken a hit because of poor lead-in numbers from Jay Leno's new prime time talk fest.

The late newscasts at WBBM and WMAQ both pulled a 5.2 rating Monday through Friday. WBBM's 5.2 is up from a 3.8 in October, 2008, while WMAQ dropped to a 5.2 from a 5.9 a year ago.

Perennial front-runner WLS-Channel 7 extended its lead in the 10 p.m. news horse race with a 9.7 this October, up from a 9.1 a year ago.

Meanwhile, WGN-Channel 9's newscast at 9 p.m. dropped to a 4.3 from a 5.1 a year ago. WGN has to work harder to attract viewers at 9 p.m. this season because of a combination of poor lead-in numbers and the arrival of popular new prime time programming on some of the network stations.

WFLD-Channel 32's flagship 9 p.m. newscast also fell slightly to a 2.1 rating from a 2.3 a year ago.

Lewis Lazare