BASEBALL PLAYOFFS CAN’T PULL ABC OUT OF CELLAR

Baseball wasn’t enough to pull ABC out of third place in the A.C. Nielsen Co. ratings last week, but the network did better with the summer game than with its fall shows.

ABC, with six nights of league championship playoff games, had a 15.7 average rating last week, up 1.1 points from the previous week. NBC won with week with an 18.4 average and the top three shows, and CBS was second at 16.8.

CBS led in evening news with an average of 11.4 and a 22 share, followed by NBC at 11.2 and a 22 share and ABC at 10.3 and a 21 share.

Each rating point represents 874,000 homes. The share is the portion of sets in use during a particular time period.

Baseball preempted ABC’s “Moonlighting” and “Growing Pains,” which had been in the top 10 the week before, but it also replaced a bunch of the network’s bottom 10 entries: “Spenser: For Hire,” “Colbys,” “Life with Lucy,” “The Ellen Burstyn Show,” “Our World” and “Heart of the City.”

CBS’ “Dallas” fell a little closer to NBC’s “Miami Vice” in Friday night’s key contest. “Vice” was 22nd with an 18.0 rating and a 29 share while “Dallas” averaged 19.5 and a 32 share for 14th place.

In the first three weeks of the season, “Dallas” has dropped from a lead of 16 share points to seven points to three last week. Baseball, however, did more damage to “Dallas” than did the Day-Glo drug-busters on NBC, as “Dallas” dropped 2.1 rating points while “Vice” was up .6.