Emmy Telecast Boosts Fox to a Ratings Win

The Emmy Awards telecast Sunday on the Fox Broadcasting Co. may have propelled the fledgling company to its first-ever ratings victory over the three major networks, according to overnight ratings released Monday from 15 major cities.

If these numbers hold up when the national ratings are released today, they would mark a dramatic improvement over last year, when Fox’s first Emmy broadcast turned out to be the least-watched Emmy show in history.

Up against summer reruns and previously released movies on CBS, NBC and ABC, the 3-hour-and-21-minute telecast from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium scored a 15.2 rating and a 25% share of the audience in the overnight ratings released by the A. C. Nielsen Co.

CBS earned a 14.2 rating, while NBC was third with a 12 rating. ABC, which was the big winner at Sunday’s awards show--its programs “thirtysomething” and “The Wonder Years” won for best dramatic and best comedy series respectively--lagged way behind with a 6.4 mark.

Fox’s numbers still fell far short of the 23.1 rating earned by the Emmy telecast on NBC in 1986, the last time the show aired on one of the major networks. But Sunday’s overnight ratings were one-third better than last year’s, when a record-long broadcast and record-low ratings evoked harsh criticism of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for its decision to license the show to upstart Fox for three years.

Fox, which is paying the academy $1.25 million a year for the rights to broadcast the Emmys, outbid the three networks by about $1 million over three years. But in the wake of last year’s ratings fiasco, some industry insiders suggested that the loss in prestige the Emmy suffered from its association with Fox was not worth the extra $1 million in the academy’s bank account.

Sunday’s telecast made academy officials feel a little better about Fox and what’s left of the sheen on the Emmys’ golden statuettes.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Doug Duitsman, the academy’s president. “We got exactly what we wanted: an entertaining show and some good numbers. We know that being on Fox, we’re never going to get the numbers we’d get on one of the networks. . . . But I don’t think the Emmy lost any luster last night.”

Duitsman added that two of the networks as well as Ted Turner’s cable network have expressed strong interest in carrying the show after next year, but Fox spokesman Brad Turell said that Sunday’s showing will put Fox in a good position to pursue a renewal of its association with the academy when its current contract expires.

“These ratings are a strong reflection of the overall growth Fox has experienced in the last year,” Turell enthused. “This is the fifth straight week Fox has broken its own ratings records, which proves that our Sunday night lineup is catching fire.”

Ratings in recent weeks for such regular Sunday night Fox series as “America’s Most Wanted” and “Married . . . With Children” have been double what the network was earning on Sunday nights last September when it carried its first Emmy telecast. That increased audience obviously helped in drawing more viewers to this year’s Emmys.

Fox also seemed to benefit from moving the Emmys from their traditional September time slot to avoid competition with next month’s Olympics. Airing the Emmys in the dog days of summer put the Emmys up against reruns of such hit network series as “Murder, She Wrote” and “Family Ties” and tired movies such as “Police Academy 2.” Against first-run fall programming on the networks, Fox’s Emmy telecast probably would not have fared so well.