In the early morning news race, NBC’s “Today” received a heap of press coverage and a nice ratings boost when Meredith Vieira took over from Katie Couric in September.

That spurt is now fading.

Recently, ABC's "Good Morning America" has been closing the gap in ratings, much as it had been before Vieira’s move to "Today" from ABC’s “The View” last summer during the big shuffle that also saw Couric move to CBS to anchor the evening news and Charles Gibson leave "GMA" for ABC's evening newscast.

Among the key news demographic, adults 25-54, “GMA” in the first quarter trailed “Today” by 550,000 viewers versus 640,000 viewers for the same period in 2006. "GMA" now averages 2.2 million viewers against "Today's" audience of just under 2.8 million and 1.2 million  for CBS's “Early Show.”

In total viewers, ABC narrowed the gap to 750,000  from almost 1.1 million a year earlier, averaging 5 million over the first quarter versus NBC's 5.8 million.

Some of that narrowing reflects gains by ABC but mostly it reflects losses by NBC, which had its lowest first quarter numbers in both demos in more than a decade.

Several factors are driving ABC's gains, and one may well be tweaks to “Good Morning America" that include adding a second female host--Robin Roberts joined Diane Sawyer last summer--and putting reporters out in the field more often, says Jim Murphy, "GMA's" executive producer.

“We’ve had an interesting season with people getting out in the field and covering stories," says Murphy. "We changed the game and [NBC] stuck with the plan they’ve always used, which is that it’s about their family there.”

Diane Sawyer has been traveling the world, with stops this week in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

“We send Chris Cuomo out on breaking news stories. We send Robin Roberts out on domestic news and feature stories. And Sam [Champion] goes out for every major weather event. We’ve been trying a different thing and it seems to be gelling.”

But whether “GMA” stands to close that gap is quite another matter. While "Today's" gains have faded some, Viera is still a powerful factor in NBC's lead, and that became even clearer last week when Vieira went on vacation. ABC shot up, narrowing the 25-54 demo gap to a mere 380,000, based on preliminary Nielsen ratings. It trailed in total viewers by only 499,000.

With Vieira now back, the spread should widen again.

Still, the initial upswing in viewing that followed Vieira’s arrival is settling down, says Shari Anne Brill, vice president and director of programming at Carat.

“It’s getting competitive again,” she says. “There’s always the initial curiosity where people want to see what the show looks like. That probably was no more apparent than when Katie Couric moved over to the ‘CBS Evening News,’” which initially saw its ratings soar.

ABC may also be benefiting from the attention being paid to “The View,” ABC’s daytime talk show that comes on an hour after “Good Morning America.” “The View” just had its most-watched first quarter ever, much of it to the credit of Rosie O'Donnell and her various spats with other celebs.

“Live with Regis and Kelly” comes on right after “GMA” on many ABC stations. That show has also been getting a lot of press coverage for host Regis Philbin’s recent bypass surgery.

Moreover, ABC has been doing well in primetime in recent weeks with the return of “Dancing with the Stars,” a top five show.

“I’d be willing to bet it’s primetime that’s driving this,” says Susan Hajny, broadcast research manager at GSD&M. “I’ve always been a skeptic about that type of thing. But in this case, it makes sense simply because of the strong female-skew on all these shows.”