TV Ratings : ‘Roseanne’ Season Finale Tops the Competition

NBC thinks “Roseanne” may be vulnerable to attack and has slotted the hit comedy “Frasier” against it this fall. But there were no chinks in the armor showing last week, as ABC’s perennial powerhouse wound up as the most-watched show on television with its last original episode of the season.

With five other shows in the Top 10--including the Daytime Emmy Awards--ABC handily won the network competition for the fourth week in a row, the A.C. Nielsen Co. reported Tuesday.

Also making a rare appearance in the Top 10 was a Fox show, in this case the season-ending episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210.” The two-hour program didn’t draw quite as high a rating as its season finale last year, but it was Fox’s best showing since then. And the program did even better locally, finishing third among the week’s 84 prime-time network programs.

But the highest-rated program here last week wasn’t on any of the four networks. It was the final episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” on KCOP-TV Channel 13, which attracted viewers in nearly 1.2 million homes--compared to 1 million for “Roseanne.”

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.Star Trek: The Next Generation KCOP 23.5 2.Roseanne KABC 20.5 3.Beverly Hills, 90210 KTTV 19.8 4.Home Improvement KABC 16.3 5.”The Substitute Wife” KNBC 15.8 6.Seinfeld KNBC 15.6 7.The Simpsons KTTV 14.8 8.These Friends of Mine KABC 14.7 9.”Angels: Mysterious Messengers” KNBC 14.5 10. Frasier KNBC 14.0

Weekly Averages

ABC: 10.3

NBC: 9.6

CBS: 9.2

FOX: 7.0