New CBS anchor Scott Pelley doesn't boost ratings

News ratings are a marathon, not a sprint, as any network publicist will tell you (especially if their show is struggling), but it would have been nice to see at least a little spark when Scott Pelley took over at CBS Evening News last week.

Though Pelley received a slight bump his first night, he averaged 5.7 million viewers for the week — matching what Katie Couric delivered last month. The figures were also slightly lower than what substitute anchor Harry Smith averaged.

The CBS program was, as usual, well behind ABC’s World News (7 million) and NBC’s Nightly News (8.2 million).