Ratings Not That Strong

The latest act in Howard Stern’s media circus got off to a strong ratings start, but without fully making good on its ringmaster’s boast that he would dethrone NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

“The Howard Stern Radio Show,” a late-night TV program that made its debut Saturday, not surprisingly fared best in major cities where his radio show is popular, out-rating “SNL” in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

In most of those cities, the late-night program doubled or tripled the ratings that the CBS station there had been averaging in that hour, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research.

That said, “SNL” more than held its own, exhibiting few ill effects from the new competition, which appeared to bring new viewers to the time period.

Locally, “Saturday Night” scored a clear victory, with roughly 416,000 homes tuning in to the NBC program on Channel 4, compared to 331,000 watching Stern on KCBS-TV Channel 2; still, that tripled KCBS’ average in the same hour with “NYPD Blue” reruns last month.