ABC’s Week Has a Fairy-Tale Ending

The combination of “Cinderella,” the Oprah Winfrey movie “Before Women Had Wings” and the season’s highest-rated “Monday Night Football” game (Green Bay vs. New England) gave ABC the prime-time ratings crown last week--wresting the glass slipper from NBC for the first time in eight weeks, based on results issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

In addition to a weak performance by the miniseries “House of Frankenstein,” NBC’s Saturday “thrillogy” got off to a so-so start, with the new series “Sleepwalkers” looking especially shaky. Even the network’s dominating Thursday lineup offered cause for concern: “Friends” and “Veronica’s Closet” fell to season lows, while “ER” slipped to its lowest rating for a new episode since the show’s first season.

ABC’s good news also came with some bad. The network’s once-powerful Tuesday lineup appears to be in serious trouble, as “Frasier” beat “Home Improvement” for the first time when both offered original episodes, due in part to the advantage NBC enjoyed the rest of the night, with “Just Shoot Me” trouncing ABC’s “Hiller and Diller.”

Friday night ratings were generally depressed by Halloween festivities, while Sunday’s season premiere of “The X-Files” scared up that show’s biggest audience except for its post-Super Bowl episode in January.

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Network Averages

Here is the number of viewers that each network averaged per hour of prime time, for last week and for the season.

ABC: 16.58 million

NBC: 13.99

CBS: 13.62

FOX: 11.30

UPN: 4.90

WB: 4.11

Season to Date

NBC: 16.09 million

CBS: 13.49

ABC: 13.33

FOX: 10.33

UPN: 4.63

WB: 4.16

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Southland Viewing

Here are Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. The rankings are based on the number of households watching.

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Program Station Households 1. “Cinderella” KABC 1,212,234 2. Seinfeld KNBC 1,071,975 3. The X-Files KTTV 1,066,966 4. “Before Women Had Wings” KABC 1,011,864 5. ER KNBC 996,837 6. Veronica’s Closet KNBC 906,671 7. Friends KNBC 886,634 8. Frasier KNBC 746,375 9. NYPD Blue KABC 731,348 10. Union Square KNBC 671,237 --. 60 Minutes KCBS 671,237

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Source: Nielsen Media Research.