TV Ratings : NBC’s Top Five Beats ABC’s Fab Four

There was the Beatles. There is NBC’s Thursday night lineup.

Ratings released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research showed that all five series from the Thursday schedule did better than Part One of “The Beatles Anthology” on ABC Sunday night. It was the third time this season that NBC’s powerhouse lineup occupied the first five positions of the weekly rankings.

Not that the first of the three-part “Beatles Anthology” series did badly: It won its time slot in homes and among the coveted 18- to 49-year-old viewers and was the highest-rated Sunday night program of the 9-week-old season except for a World Series game on NBC. But it didn’t deliver the sort of blockbuster numbers that ABC’s massive promotion campaign led some people to expect.

ABC still won the weekly network race, however, with help from “Home Improvement,” “Monday Night Football” and “NYPD Blue.” The network is in a tight race with NBC to defend its prime-time ratings crown.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

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 Station Rating 1. ER KNBC 25.5 2. Friends KNBC 24.1 3. Seinfeld KNBC 24.0 4. “Beatles Anthology 1” KABC 21.6 5. The Single Guy KNBC 19.3 6. Caroline in the City KNBC 18.0 7. Lois & Clark:/Superman KABC 17.1 8. 60 Minutes KCBS 16.8 9. America’s Funniest Home Videos KABC 16.2 10. NYPD Blue KABC 15.9

*--*

Weekly Averages

ABC: 11.7

NBC: 11.5

CBS: 10.0

FOX: 7.6

UPN: 3.4

WB: 2.5

Season to Date

NBC: 12.1

ABC: 11.9

CBS: 9.6

FOX: 7.5

UPN: 3.3

WB: 2.4

Source: A. C. Nielsen