TV Ratings : Viewers Take a Fourth of July Holiday

With a schedule of virtually wall-to-wall reruns and the July Fourth holiday to boot, the major commercial networks registered some of their worst ratings in history last week, figures from Nielsen Media Research showed Tuesday. ABC, CBS and NBC combined to attract only 44% of the prime-time audience, and Fox accounted for a mere 9% more.

That didn’t change what got watched. NBC’s “Friends” was No. 1 for the third week in a row--although Matt LeBlanc and his co-stars were outdrawn locally, where “Seinfeld” was the most-watched show. It ranked second nationally.

With ABC’s normally strong Tuesday lineup hurt by people out on Fourth of July celebrations, NBC won the weekly competition with an average 7.7 rating--a figure 33% below what the network averaged during the regular season.

Fox, meanwhile, attracted only 9% of the available viewers for the fourth week in a row. It averaged 12% during the regular season.

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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.

Program Network Rating 1. Seinfeld KNBC 16.3 2. Friends KNBC 16.0 3. ER KNBC 15.4 4. 60 Minutes KCBS 14.9 5. “Terror on Track 9” KCBS 12.6 6. Murder, She Wrote KCBS 12.2 7. PrimeTime Live KABC 11.9 8. 20/20 KABC 11.8 9. Roseanne KABC 11.7 10. Married ... With Children KTTV 11.1

Weekly Averages NBC: 7.7 ABC: 7.2 CBS: 7.2 FOX: 4.5 UPN: 1.7 WB: 1.6

Season to Date ABC: 11.4 NBC: 11.1 CBS: 10.3 FOX: 7.1 UPN: 3.6 WB: 1.8 Source: A. C. Nielsen Ratings