CBS EVENING NEWS BACK IN NO. 1 SLOT

“CBS Evening News” and Dan Rather climbed back into first place in the network news race last week without basketball to bounce the schedule around.

CBS won the evening news race last week with a 10.3 rating and a 22 share, ahead of NBC with a 9.7 rating and 22 share (shares were the same, due to rounding) and ABC with a 9.4 rating and 21 share, according to figures released Tuesday by A.C. Nielsen Co.

“NBC Nightly News” won the race the previous week with a 10.4 rating, edging CBS at 10.1 and ABC at 10.0.

CBS, which had won the news race for 213 consecutive weeks, had pre-empted Rather in 20 West Coast markets twice during the first week of June to broadcast the National Basketball Assn. playoffs.

In the last seven weeks, CBS News has a rating of 11.0, NBC 10.5 and ABC 9.8. Compared with the same period a year ago, NBC’s “Nightly News” is up 8% in the ratings, ABC is up 5% and CBS is off 1% according to Gerald Jaffe, NBC’s vice president for research projects.

Each ratings point equals 859,000 homes with television. The share is the percentage of sets in use during the time period.

NBC’s news division was cheered by a strong showing for the premiere of “1986,” the magazine show anchored by Roger Mudd and Connie Chung. It placed 28th for the week with a rating of 12.3 and a 23 share.