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The Today show faced little competition until ABC launched Good Morning America in November 1975. GMA was similar to the Today show in that it used a blend of news, interviews and featured articles. The set of GMA was more like a living room rather than a newsroom. This gave the show a more personal feeling, like inviting friends over for coffee and conversation. David Hartman was the first host of GMA, with Nancy Dussault as his co-host. Nancy didn't stay long and was replaced by Sandy Hill in 1977. Although GMA started off slowly in the ratings, through out the last half of the seventies it climbed steadily; and in 1979, GMA unseated NBC's Today Show as the top-rated morning show.

In the eighties, the Today show was going through numerous changes and thus ran consistently second to GMA in the ratings. Sandy Hill left GMA in the summer of 1980, and was replaced by Joan Lunden. The David Hartman/ Joan Lunden team stayed together until 1987, when David Hartman decided to leave and was replaced by Charlie Gibson. However, the Charlie Gibson/ Joan Lunden team proved to be an extremely successful partnership for ABC. For the most part, GMA stayed at the top of the early morning ratings throughout most of the eighties.

Despite the efforts of CBS, the competition through out the nineties remained between NBC's Today show and ABC's Good Morning America. For the first half of the nineties, GMA stayed in first place for early morning shows, for the Charlie Gibson/Joan Lunden team was hard to beat. When Joan Lunden was replaced by Lisa McRee in 1997, the program's ratings dropped. They further dropped when Kevin Newman replaced Charlie Gibson in 1998. ABC tried to boost ratings by bringing Charlie back and paring him up with Diane Sawyer. The team was supposed to be a temporary arrangement but due to their success, ABC was in no hurry to replace them. In addition to the new anchor team of Gibson and Sawyer, the show presented a reworked set with softer, warmer tones of yellow and gold, replacing the icier blues that previously made up the set. Along with this new coloring of the set, new graphics and music also debuted.

Since debuting together as an anchor team in Jan. 18, 1999, Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson have given GMA a jolt in the ratings. Day-one sampling of the new anchor duo was impressive for the show's ratings shot up 34% over its fourth-quarter average. The first full week of the Charlie and Diane show produced a 25% gain over the fourth-quarter average, up about 600,000 viewers, with 3.6/15. However, Today on NBC remained well ahead of the pack, averaging about 2 million more weekly viewers than GMA and 3 million more viewers than CBS's This Morning.

On Sept. 13, 1999, Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson began broadcasting from a new studio in Time Square. Since the debut of the Sawyer/Gibson team, GMA increased 15% in both ratings and total viewers; however, it continues to fall behind Today show. According to Nielsen ratings for the week of August 14-20, GMA attracted an average audience of 3.7 millions viewers, compared with Today's 5.4 million. But the biggest problem in 2000 was the lack of any post-Sawyer plan, since Sawyer was supposed to be a temporary placement. Overall, in 2000, ABC was ahead of CBS in all news categories, morning, evening and public affairs. But still had its work cut out to catch first-place NBC.

In 2001, GMA began to see its ratings drop, particularly in the key ad-friendly demos of women 25-54 and women 18-49. GMA began to face criticism as critiques noted that the real problem with the show was that Gibson and Sawyer weren't perky enough. Nonetheless, GMA's viewers continued to grow and in Feb. 2003, GMA was separated by NBC's Today by only 540,000 viewers, the closest the two arch rivals have been since 1996. GMA emerged from February averaging 5.43 million viewers, which is the total that it had reached during that decade. In 2003, GMA took in $357 million, compared to Today's $497 million. Thus, the $140 million gap shows that GMA still has a lot of catching up to do.

Through 2003, ABC network remained in last place compared to all the major nets. Many said that it was largely due to the many individuals that are in charge and thus results in a sort of "corporate constipation." Josef Adalin in Variety stated, "While Leslie Moonves rules CBS with an iron fist and Jeff Zucker is largely left alone to run NBC, the Alphabet is a network run by committee everyone from Eisner and Disney chief operating officer Bob Iger to ABC TV prexy Alex Wallau, entertainment TV group chief Lloyd Bran and entertainment prexy Susan Lyne." However, ABC continues to boast the strongest owned-and-operated TV station group in the country; and the net's news operation is a solid number two with both World News Tonight and Good Morning America.

`By July 2004, Today's lead over GMA had shrunk drastically. A year ago, Today was drawing 43% more 25-54 viewers than its ABC rival. During this year's second quarter that lead shrank to 30%, and, for the month of June alone dropped to about 24%. GMA is gaining older viewers. Moreover, unlike Today, GMA relies less on anchors Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson and more on feature pieces by its correspondents.

According to Yahoo! News as of Jan. 21, 2005, GMA is having a closer race with Today. Today averaged 5.9 million viewers for the week, compared with 5.7 million for GMA, the closest the two programs have been since 1996. In advertising revenues, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus ad-tracking data through October 2004, Today captures about 55% of the ad dollars spent on morning news, while GMA gets approximately 33% of that revenue and CBS about 15%. Today's high percentage is partly due to the fact that it runs three hours while its rivals run only two hours. The crowd that gathers outside of GMA is an estimated 300 people a day compared to the Today show's crowd of 400 people a day.