TV Ratings : ‘Home Improvement’ Even Hotter in Summer

‘Home Improvement,” the No. 3-rated series on TV last season, is shaping up as America’s No. 1 summer viewing pleasure. Ratings released Tuesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co. showed the ABC comedy atop the rankings for the fourth week in a row.

The series, which stars Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson as the happily married parents of three boys, was seen in about 15.5 million homes last week. That was well below the 17.7 million it averaged during the regular season, but with viewing levels down during the summer, it was still enough to beat everything else on the air, including the 1993 All-Star Game on CBS.

ABC’s newsmagazines “PrimeTime Live” and “20/20” also were in the Top 5, but CBS won the network race, while ABC and NBC tied for second.

Among the network evening newscasts, ABC’s “World News Tonight” was first for the 46th consecutive week, while “NBC Nightly News” was second and “CBS Evening News,” which last month installed Connie Chung at the anchor desk with Dan Rather, was third for the second week in a row.

Southland Ratings

Here are A. C. Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. Each rating point equals 49,657 households.

Program Station Rating 1. Home Improvement KABC 16.3 2. PrimeTime Live KABC 14.6 3. The Simpsons KTTV 13.8 4. 60 Minutes KCBS 13.7 5. Martin KTTV 12.6 Murder, She Wrote KCBS 12.6 7. Roseanne KABC 12.2 8. Step by Step KABC 11.9 9. “With a Vengeance” KCBS 11.8 10. Seinfeld KNBC 11.6

Weekly Averages

CBS: 10.0

ABC: 8.6

NBC: 8.6

FOX: 5.5