CBS NEWS SLIPS TO 3RD PLACE

The release Tuesday of last week’s A.C. Nielsen Co. television ratings brought bad news to the “CBS Evening News.”

The longtime ratings champion was third for the week ending June 27, with ABC’s “World News Tonight” a close second to the victorious “NBC Nightly News.”

CBS’ program, anchored by Dan Rather, got a 9.4 rating, compared to a 9.7 for “World News Tonight” and a 9.9 for NBC’s “Nightly News.”

One rating point represents about 859,000 homes, 1% of the nation’s homes with television sets.

“Nightly News,” anchored by Tom Brokaw, last month snapped the 213-week winning streak that Rather’s newscast had enjoyed. But NBC’s victory for the week ending June 6 was by only a thin margin--three-tenths of a rating point.

The race continued to be close through the rest of June, but CBS kept winning until last week.

Last week, the CBS show got a new executive producer, Tom Bettag, but CBS officials said the move was not related to ratings.

Asked for comment Tuesday on the program’s third-place finish, a CBS spokeswoman said, “We really have no excuses, no explanations, but we shall prevail in the long run.”