‘Pat Sajak Show’ Tops First Week’s Ratings

Boosted by a big opening-night tune-in, “The Pat Sajak Show” handily won the competition for late-night viewers during its first week on the air, ratings showed Thursday.

CBS predictably pronounced itself pleased. NBC acknowledged the victory, but predictably professed no alarm; one executive said that Sajak’s ratings have declined since his Jan. 9 debut as host of CBS’ first late-night talk-variety show since “The Merv Griffin Show” was dropped in 1969.

CBS said that according to the A.C. Nielsen ratings released Thursday--the first time that late-night figures covering the entire country have been available since Sajak’s debut--the 90-minute Sajak show averaged a 5.3 rating compared to the 4.7 average for NBC’s competing one-hour “Tonight Show” and the first 30 minutes of the David Letterman show.

The margin was greater in ratings for Sajak versus “Tonight,” which stars the durable Johnny Carson, who now only does the show three nights a week. Last week, Monday’s “Tonight Show” was hosted by Jay Leno, and the Tuesday broadcast was a repeat.

In head-to-head competition, Sajak’s effort--which CBS said got a 6.9 rating on opening night--averaged a 6.1 rating last week compared to 5.3 for “The Tonight Show.” ABC’s half-hour “Nightline” averaged a 5. Each ratings point represents 904,000 homes.

To say that CBS was pleased with the first week’s returns “would probably be an understatement,” CBS research vice president Michael Eisenberg said Thursday.

He declined to make public Sajak’s night-by-night ratings, saying CBS’ contract with Nielsen barred that.

NBC apparently had a different contract, however. A research executive there who asked not to be identified said his figures showed Sajak’s show getting a 6.8 rating on opening night. The next night, he said, Sajak dropped to a 5.4.

On Jan. 11--a night on which all the networks had lower late-night ratings because of schedule disruptions caused by President Reagan’s televised farewell address--the Sajak effort had a 4.3 rating. On Thursday night, he said, Sajak had a 5.2, and he ended his first week on the air with 5.

Overnight ratings for Monday through Wednesday this week show that the decline is continuing, the NBC executive said. NBC is not concerned by Sajak’s challenge, he said.

Both he and CBS’ Eisenberg agreed on one thing: that Sajak’s audience, at least in the first week, largely seemed to have come from viewers who normally would watch programs on cable TV and independent stations, and not from the fans of “Tonight,” Letterman or ABC’s “Nightline.”