‘Cheers’ Finale Tops Ratings

The season finale of “Cheers,” with waitress Diane leaving bartender Sam at the altar, was the top-rated, prime-time show in the Nielsen ratings as NBC edged CBS to win the first full week of the May “sweeps.”

CBS won the Sunday-night battle of the TV movies with a 10th-ranked performance by “A Gathering of Old Men,” a story of elderly black men finally standing up for each other. It beat part one of the two-part mystery “Hands of a Stranger” on NBC and part one of the two-part “Queenie” on ABC, a partly fictional biography of Merle Oberon.