Baseball Plays Havoc With Fall Stars

The steady decline in prime-time network view ing has continued as the fall TV season progresses, with ratings for the four major networks down 7% compared to the same week a year ago, based on results issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

Ratings have been affected in part by the Major League Baseball playoffs, which preempted various series and allowed others to flourish. Last week, for example, ABC’s “The Drew Carey Show” scored its highest rating ever with “3rd Rock From the Sun” on the bench because of NBC’s baseball coverage.

While preemptions have made it difficult to gauge success, a handful of new shows appear to be doing well, including NBC’s “Veronica’s Closet,” ABC’s “Dharma & Greg” and “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and Fox’s “Ally McBeal.” Several WB Network shows also delivered record ratings last week, with WB and Fox posting gains compared to last season while the other four networks are all down.

Already struggling are ABC’s Thursday and Saturday lineups--except for “The Practice,” which scored its highest rating of the season Saturday. New Friday night comedies on CBS and ABC also appear shaky, as do NBC’s Sunday tandem of “Men Behaving Badly” and “Jenny.”

ABC edged CBS for second place overall, thanks in part to “PrimeTime Live,” the week’s most-watched news hour with Sarah Ferguson as guest. By contrast, the premiere of CBS’ “Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel” received a ratings shiner, ranking fourth in its time slot.

Network Averages

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

Last Week

NBC: 13.83 million

ABC: 12.99

CBS: 12.84

FOX: 9.92

UPN: 4.89

WB: 4.40

Season to Date

NBC: 15.18 million

CBS: 14.06

ABC: 13.02

FOX: 9.63

UPN: 4.63

WB: 4.16

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. Seinfeld KNBC 1,186,186 2. ER KNBC 1,032,970 3. Friends KNBC 894,582 4. Veronica’s Closet KNBC 864,927 5. NYPD Blue KABC 810,560 6. Frasier KNBC 800,675 7. Union Square KNBC 766,078 8. Just Shoot Me KNBC 746,308 9. 60 Minutes KCBS 691,942 10. Dateline: NBC (Tue.) KNBC 652,402

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Source: Nielsen Media Research