TV Ratings

With a boost from the Grammy Awards and Elizabeth Taylor’s appearance on four Monday night sitcoms, CBS scored its first win of the 24-week-old prime-time season last week, Nielsen Media Research reported Tuesday.

The three-hour Grammy ceremony on Wednesday, normally one of CBS’ weak nights, ranked ninth among the week’s 99 prime-time network programs (and was fourth locally), with an average audience of 14 million homes tuning in. That was actually the second-lowest rating ever for the record industry’s awards show, but still an improvement over last year’s 11.2 million average for the Grammys.

Taylor’s running appearance through the four Monday comedies helped each of them. “Murphy Brown,” starring Candice Bergen, fared best at No. 7 while “The Nanny” was 10th, “Can’t Hurry Love” was 12th and “High Society” was 21st.

ABC finished third for the week but got some good news on Tuesday night, where “Coach” continued to make inroads against NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun,” tying it for the first time since the hot comedy about space aliens on Earth hit the air Jan. 9.

(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 Network Rating 1. Seinfeld KNBC 22.9 2. Friends KNBC 19.9 3. ER KNBC 19.4 4. The Grammy Awards KCBS 17.0 5. Home Improvement KABC 16.8 6. Caroline in the City KNBC 16.7 7. The Single Guy KNBC 16.5 8. Frasier KNBC 15.8 9. NYPD Blue KABC 15.2 10. 60 Minutes KCBS 15.1

*--*

Weekly Averages

CBS: 11.4

NBC: 10.6

ABC: 9.4

FOX: 7.7

UPN: 3.4

WB: 2.6

Season to Date

NBC: 12.0

ABC: 11.0

CBS: 9.7

FOX: 7.5

UPN: 3.2

WB: 2.4

SOURCE: A.C. Nielsen