TV Ratings : NBC Sweeps Into May With a Beastly Win

With the May sweeps underway and the season down to its final few weeks, NBC registered a beast of a victory in the prime-time ratings last week, Nielsen Media Research reported Tuesday. The peacock network, heading for its first prime-time crown since 1991, had 15 of the top 30 programs and beat runner-up ABC by more than two ratings points.

NBC got its usual strong performances from the Thursday night shows but also was aided on Sunday by Part 1 of its movie “The Beast,” starring William Petersen, which ranked third overall with an average audience of 31.2 million people.

ABC finished a strong second in the Sunday movie competition with “She Woke Up Pregnant” placing No. 9, but with a much smaller audience--about 18.7 million viewers.

“Murder, She Wrote,” moving from Thursdays to its familiar 8 p.m. Sunday slot for its final four original episodes, shot up to No. 18 and boosted CBS’ ratings by 33% over what the network had been averaging this 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.

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1. Program Station Rating 1. ER KNBC 24.5 2. Seinfeld KNBC 22.1 3. “The Beast” Part 1 KNBC 19.5 4. Caroline in the City KNBC 19.3 5. Friends KNBC 18.9 6. Frasier KNBC 16.4 7. Murder One (Tues.) KABC 16.1 8. 60 Minutes KCBS 15.9 9. Boston Common KNBC 15.1 10. The Simpsons KTTV 13.9

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Weekly Averages

NBC 11.9

ABC 9.6

CBS 9.2

FOX 6.3

UPN 2.5

WB 2.2

Season to Date

NBC 11.7

ABC 10.7

CBS 9.6

FOX 7.3

UPN 3.1

WB 2.5