TV Ratings : Lowest Oscar Show Since ’92 Leads ABC to Win

The Academy Awards telecast got its lowest ratings since 1992 but still attracted an average audience of nearly 10 million more than NBC’s high-flying “ER” last week, Nielsen Media Research reported Tuesday. The Oscars, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, helped ABC win the week in the competition for total households for the eighth time in the 28-week-old prime-time season.

NBC was a strong No. 2, thanks to its Tuesday and Thursday programs, all but one of which (“Wings”) finished in the Top 20. It also won the battle of movies Sunday night with “Abducted: A Father’s Love” (No. 14).

CBS finished third but saw its cop drama “Nash Bridges” get off to a good start. The premiere of the Don Johnson vehicle on Friday finished well behind ABC’s “20/20” but beat NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and a special showing on Saturday after NCAA basketball tied for No. 30.

CBS’ “60 Minutes,” meanwhile, finished at No. 8 overall and registered its third best rating of the season with a report on the O.J. Simpson trial, while “Dateline NBC” fell to 80th.

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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 Station Rating 1. “Academy Awards” KABC 45.9 2. “Barbara Walters Special” KABC 29.5 3. Friends KNBC 24.6 4. ER KNBC 23.9 5. Seinfeld KNBC 23.5 6. 60 Minutes KCBS 20.8 7. Caroline in the City KNBC 20.1 8. Frasier KNBC 19.1 9. Boston Common KNBC 18.9 10. Roseanne KABC 16.4

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Weekly Averages

ABC: 11.8

NBC: 11.5

CBS: 9.4

FOX: 6.6

WB: 2.9

UPN: 2.8

Season to Date

NBC: 11.8

ABC: 10.9

CBS: 9.7

FOX: 7.5

UPN: 3.2

WB: 2.5

Source: A. C. Nielsen