TV Ratings : ’48 Hours’ Joins ’60 Minutes’ in the Top 10

ABC’s “Home Improvement” was on top for the second week in a row, but CBS still won the competition among the networks in prime time last week, the A.C. Nielsen Co. reported Tuesday. With five shows among the Top 10, CBS won for the 19th time in 26 weeks this season.

Two of CBS’ Top 10 finishers were newsmagazines: “60 Minutes,” which is used to being in that stratosphere, and the younger “48 Hours,” which registered its second highest ratings ever with a report on the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Tex.

ABC’s two-part movie “Family Pictures” got off to a poor start Sunday night, attracting only 14% of the available viewers. The winner from 9-11 p.m. was CBS’ TV movie “Without a Kiss Goodbye,” starring Lisa Hartman Black, which drew 29% of the audience and ranked No. 10 among the week’s 94 prime-time programs.

Nor did ABC have any luck with “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” which in its second week back on the schedule garnered only 12% of the audience and ran fourth in its time period Saturday night. Fox fared even worse Sunday night with the return of “Parker Lewis,” which attracted only 8% of the audience.

WEEKLY AVERAGES CBS: 13.2 ABC: 11.5 NBC: 11.2 FOX: 7.1

SEASON TO DATE CBS: 13.4 ABC: 12.4 NBC: 11.1 FOX: 7.8