NBC Outhits Rivals Despite Lowest All-Star Game

Baseball’s All-Star Game drew its lowest prime-time ratings ever but NBC still won the viewership race last week, Nielsen Media Research reported Tuesday.

NBC’s telecast of the All-Star Game, which saw the Dodgers’ Mike Piazza lead the National League to a 6-0 victory, attracted about 18.5 million viewers to rank second for the week behind a rerun of NBC’s “Seinfeld,” which drew 20 million people, according to the Nielsen count.

The All-Star Game ratings were 5% lower than last year, which had been the game’s previous low mark.

Thanks to the ongoing popularity of “ER,” “Friends,” “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “Dateline NBC,” however, NBC easily beat its rivals by earning 17% of the prime-time audience for the week. CBS got 14%, ABC 13% and Fox 9%--all well below their regular-season averages.

ABC did better among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers whom most advertisers covet, finishing behind NBC but ahead of CBS and Fox. And in the battle of network newscasts, ABC’s “World News Tonight” placed first for the 201st time in the last 202 weeks.

(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 Station Rating 1. Seinfeld KNBC 16.5 2. 3rd Rock From the Sun KNBC 14.4 3. Roseanne KABC 13.9 4. Dateline NBC KNBC 13.6 5. Home Improvement KABC 13.0 60 Minutes KCBS 13.0 7. ER KNBC 12.5 8. PrimeTime Live (Wed.) KABC 12.4 Friends KNBC 12.4 Frasier (Thur.) KNBC 12.4

*--*

Weekly Averages

NBC: 9.0

CBS: 7.2

ABC: 7.0

FOX: 4.7

WB: 2.4

UPN: 2.2

Season to Date

NBC: 11.2

ABC: 10.0

CBS: 9.2

FOX: 6.8

UPN: 2.9

FOX: 2.4