ABC Wins Election Ratings Race

Concluding a presidential campaign that saw a marked increase in voter interest and viewership of political programming, ratings for Tuesday’s election-night coverage on the three major networks were up 19% over generally comparable figures from 1988.

According to figures from the major metropolitan areas released Wednesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co., prime-time coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC drew a combined 42.5 rating and attracted 58% of the available audience. Coverage of the 1988 results had a 35.8 rating and a 53% audience share.

A rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a particular program. This year’s figures cover 25 markets, compared to 17 for 1988.

As it has been throughout the campaign, ABC was the ratings winner, with an 18.4 rating for the night. CBS was second at 12.2 and NBC was third at 11.9. ABC was also the most-watched network in 1988.

Fox, which counterprogrammed the election coverage with new episodes of “The Simpsons” and “Herman’s Head” and reruns of “In Living Color” and “Martin,” averaged an 11.5 rating between 8 and 10 p.m., trailing ABC (17.8) and CBS (11.9) but edging NBC (11.4).

Locally, KABC-TV Channel 7 was the clear ratings winner, finishing atop all but two quarter-hours between 4 p.m. and 1 a.m. while running a combination of network and local coverage. KNBC-TV Channel 4 was second and KCBS-TV Channel 2 was third.

“Back to the Future” on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and Fox programming on KTTV-TV Channel 11 finished ahead of election coverage on KCBS between 8 and 9:30 p.m. “The Simpsons” trailed only KABC’s election coverage from 8-8:30 p.m., drawing a 15.1 rating, while “Back to the Future” had a 9.6 from 8 to 9:30 p.m.