ABC Starts Sweeps by Taking the Lion’s Share

ABC entered the critical November “sweeps” period with a mighty roar, due to its Sunday broadcast of Walt Disney’s “The Lion King.” Besides being the highest-rated movie of the year so far, the animated film, which finished at No. 7, also propelled ABC to its first weekly win this season, according to figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research. This news came as a welcome relief to the network since it finished in fourth place the previous week, in large part because of Fox’s successful broadcast of the World Series.

The win also put ABC neck-and-neck with CBS for second place in season-to-date ratings in the battle for total viewers.

Meanwhile, Fox had good and bad news. The good news was that the risky move of switching “The X-Files” to Sunday continued to pay off in its second week, with the drama, at No. 16, providing stiff competition for movies on ABC and CBS. The bad news for Fox was that “Millennium,” the drama from “X-Files” creator Chris Carter, which replaced “The X-Files” on Friday, lost a third of its audience from the previous week’s premiere, finishing at No. 58.

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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 49,464 households.

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Program Station Rating 1. ER KNBC 23.8 2. Seinfeld KNBC 22.8 3. The X-Files KTTV 19.6 4. Friends KNBC 18.4 5. Home Improvement KABC 18.1 6. “The Lion King” KABC 16.8 7. NYPD Blue KABC 16.6 - The Single Guy KNBC 16.6 9. Suddenly Susan KNBC 16.3 10. “When Animals Attack 2” KTTV 15.6

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Weekly Averages

ABC: 11.1

NBC: 10.7

CBS: 9.4

FOX: 7.5

UPN: 3.5

WB: 2.7

Season to Date

NBC: 10.8

CBS: 10.0

ABC: 9.9

FOX: 8.7

UPN: 3.3

WB: 2.8

Source: A. C. Nielsen