TV Ratings : Season Finales Are the Week’s Big Draw

Season-ending episodes brought larger than usual audiences to several TV dramas last week. But the opening installment of CBS’ movie about the Menendez murders did not share in the windfall, A. C. Nielsen data showed Tuesday.

ABC’s “NYPD Blue” did best among the dramas, placing No. 5 among the week’s 78 prime-time network programs with an audience of about 15.7 million homes. “L.A. Law,” completing its eight-season run on NBC, tied for No. 7 with ABC’s “Home Improvement.” And Fox’s “Melrose Place” registered its biggest ratings ever to finish No. 18 nationally--and No. 4 locally.

Part 1 of CBS’ “Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills” got clobbered on Sunday, however. With about 9 million homes tuning in, it finished at No. 46 and not only ranked well behind ABC’s telecast of the hit movie “City Slickers” (No. 6) and NBC’s movie “Seasons of the Heart” (No. 21), but also fell about 565,000 homes short of the audience Fox got five weeks earlier for “Honor Thy Father and Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Murders.”

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 50,064 households.

Sta- Rat- Program tion ing 1.Roseanne KABC 20.5 2.NYPD Blue KABC 20.0 3.Frasier KNBC 19.4 4.Melrose Place KTTV 19.2 5.The Simpsons KTTV 18.7 6.Seinfeld KNBC 18.6 7.Coach KABC 17.9 8.L.A. Law KNBC 17.2 9.60 Minutes KCBS 17.0 10.Home Improvement KABC 16.7

Weekly Averages

ABC: 11.8

CBS: 11.0

NBC: 10.2

FOX: 7.8