‘KTLA Morning News’ and Fox’s ‘EDJ’ Hardly Rate : Television: Nationally, the ratings sweeps show a 13% gain for Fox as Big Three networks falter.

Two new locally produced news shows staggered out of the box, while Fox gained ground on the stumbling Big Three, which finished in a dead heat for the first time ever during the just-concluded July sweeps, according to numbers released Thursday by A.C. Nielsen Co.

“The KTLA Morning News,” the area’s first two-hour local morning newscast, was wiped out by the three network morning shows during its first four weeks on the air. During the KTLA show’s premiere month, NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning” increased their combined audience over last summer’s.

KTLA’s new program was seen in just 75,000 of the area’s 5 million television households. It placed dead last in the 7-9 a.m. time period among the market’s seven VHF stations. The new show fared a bit better in the ratings as measured by Arbitron, nipping both “This Morning” on KCBS Channel 2 and cartoons on KCOP Channel 13.

“Entertainment Daily Journal,” Fox’s new syndicated entertainment news program that is produced at Fox-owned KTTV Channel 11, also sputtered to a last-place finish during its opening three weeks. Playing against fierce competition at 11 p.m., the show averaged about 95,000 households a night, but it earned only a 5% share locally of all those watching television at that hour. Reruns of “Cheers” on KTLA won the time period with a 17% share of the available audience.

Nonetheless, the Fox publicity mill was gloating Thursday as the fourth network increased its national prime-time audience 13% over last summer, while NBC, ABC and CBS lost another 3% of their combined audience. Spearheaded by new episodes of “Beverly Hills, 90210” and several other regular series, Fox almost equaled its rating for the 1990-91 fall season during a summer month when TV viewing is traditionally down. While Fox trailed first-place NBC in audience share by 42% last July and 52% last May, it lagged only 24% behind all three major networks during July.

Meanwhile, ABC, NBC and CBS finished in a three-way tie for the first time ever, according to CBS research. Despite suffering a 9% decline in ratings from last summer, NBC maintained the highest average rating for regular series among all networks and claimed a share of the July sweeps title for the seventh consecutive year. CBS’ “60 Minutes” was the top-rated individual program.

Like Fox, basic cable, boosted primarily by regional sports channel viewing, slugged its way to a combined 20% share of the prime-time national audience, beating each of the Big Three by about 1.8 million homes a night.

On the local news scene, KNBC Channel 4 and KABC Channel 7 shared first place last month. KNBC swept all news time periods, according to Nielsen, overtaking KABC, which had won all the afternoon newscasts during the May ratings period.

But KABC won most of the news races as measured by Arbitron, including the 11 p.m. newscast, which KNBC had dominated in Arbitron ratings for the last several years.

KCBS Channel 2 continued third in all news time periods, but buoyed by the strong lead-in of “Geraldo” at 4 p.m., the station’s newscasts made their most competitive showing in more than five years, according to Nielsen statistics. The 6 p.m. newscast, for example, trailed second-place KABC by only two-tenths of a point and first-place KNBC by just three-tenths of a point, or about 15,000 homes.

KTLA continued to lead the 10 p.m. independent news race with KTTV Channel 11 a distant second, KCOP was third and KCAL Channel 9 last in Nielsen’s ratings. KCAL and KCOP flipped positions in Arbitron statistics. KCAL’s three hours of weeknight news in prime time displayed some staying power, however, as all three hours soared above the numbers they posted both last July and last May, according to both rating services. Taking advantage of rather lax competition offered by a bevy of network reruns, the station’s combined rating for the three hours improved nearly 20% over the May sweeps.

Another new syndicated program, “The Montel Williams Show,” was hammered in its premiere last month, finishing a distant last at 4 p.m. on Channel 13 behind local news, “Geraldo,” cartoons and reruns of “Airwolf.” As usual, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on KABC was the monarch of the talk shows, beating KNBC’s “Donahue” at 3 p.m. “Geraldo” improved nearly 20% on its numbers last summer, topping “Donahue” as well.

The July sweeps is one of four annual television rating periods used by local stations to set advertising rates. Since viewers tend to watch far less television in the summer, the July sweeps are considered less important than those in November, February and May.

In other sweeps highs and lows, according to Nielsen:

* Spanish-language station KMEX Channel 34’s 6 p.m. local news grabbed a 53% advantage over rival KVEA Channel 52’s newscast--115,000 homes to 75,000 homes a night.

* Johnny Carson looks like he’ll go out with a bang locally as “The Tonight Show” crushed all late-night rivals with an average nightly audience of more than 275,000 Los Angeles homes on KNBC. “The Arsenio Hall Show” on Channel 13 was next with about 215,000 homes.

* “Star Trek: The Next Generation” reruns proved out of this world at 6 p.m. for KCOP, finishing in a first-place tie in ratings with a KNBC newscast during its first half-hour. It stayed strong during its second half-hour, barely trailing the three network newscasts at 6:30 p.m.

* Tom Brokaw of NBC proved to be L.A.’s most popular summer anchor, followed closely by both ABC’s Peter Jennings and CBS’ Dan Rather, who improved his standing nearly 20% over a year ago.

* “Wheel of Fortune” on KCBS spun its way to the top again at 7 p.m., outdistancing KNBC’s “Entertainment Tonight,” KABC’s “Inside Edition,” KCOP’s “Cosby” and KTTV’s “Studs.”