TV Ratings : NBC Enlists ‘Few Good Men’ in Ratings Win

Everything seems to be going right for NBC at the moment. At a time when many theatrical movies perform tepidly on commercial television because they’ve already been seen on video and pay-TV, NBC’s telecast of “A Few Good Men” won its time period Sunday night and helped the network score another triumph in the prime-time ratings race.

Indeed, NBC is dominating the May ratings sweeps en route to claiming its first prime-time season championship since 1991. The figures released Wednesday by Nielsen Media Research showed the peacock network with the six top shows for a record third week in a row.

NBC also had the top-rated TV movie of the week with “No One Would Tell” at No. 8. CBS’ “Our Son, the Matchmaker” was No. 24, while part 2 of the CBS miniseries “A Season in Purgatory” was No. 33 and Part 1 of ABC’s “Dead Man’s Walk” was No. 41.

CBS was second for the week in average number of households reached, but ABC took the runner-up spot in the competition for the advertiser-prized category of viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

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. Seinfeld KNBC 25.3 2. ER KNBC 25.2 3. Friends KNBC 23.3 4. The Single Guy KNBC 19.6 Caroline in the City KNBC 19.6 6. Roseanne KABC 18.1 7. NYPD Blue KABC 18.0 8. Frasier KNBC 16.4 9. Home Improvement KABC 16.0 10. When Animals Attack KTTV 15.2

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Weekly Averages

NBC: 12.3

CBS: 9.9

ABC: 9.0

FOX: 7.8

UPN: 2.6

WB: 2.0

Season to Date

NBC: 11.7

ABC: 10.6

CBS: 9.6

FOX: 7.3

UPN: 3.1

WB: 2.5