TV Ratings

“The Single Guy” (Jonathan Silverman) was in good company Wednesday as the comedy and its four neighboring Thursday night series grabbed the five top spots and helped propel NBC to first place in the prime-time standings last week.

The figures from Nielsen Media Research showed that CBS was runner-up in households for the second week in a row but came in fourth among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers most coveted by advertisers. NBC continues to lead for the season and in the February sweeps.

Series dominated viewing last week, with only one of the networks’ seven original TV movies cracking the Top 20 programs: Part 2 of CBS’ “The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years,” which was 14th. Its ratings were about 11% below what Part 1 had earned the previous week.

Fox, meanwhile, is having a good February sweeps, running 4% ahead of last year among 18- to 49-year-olds. It had five shows win their time period in that demographic last week: “The X-Files,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills, 90210” and back-to-back installments of both “Cops” and “Married . . . With Children.”

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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.

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Program Network Rating 1. ER KNBC 30.1 2. Friends KNBC 25.9 3. Seinfeld KNBC 24.1 4. Caroline in the City KNBC 20.4 5. 60 Minutes KCBS 19.5 6. The Single Guy KNBC 18.6 7. NYPD Blue KABC 17.0 8. Frasier KNBC 16.8 9. Melrose Place KTTV 16.6 10. The X-Files KTTV 16.4

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Weekly Averages

NBC: 11.2

CBS: 10.2

ABC: 9.7

FOX: 7.9

UPN: 3.8

WB: 2.5

Season to Date

NBC: 12.0

ABC: 11.0

CBS: 9.6

FOX: 7.5

UPN: 3.2

WB: 2.4

Source: A.C. Nielsen