Bulls-Pacers Series Gives NBC Winning Assist

The NBA championship series begins this week, but NBC has already seen its basketball action score fantastic ratings, based on results issued Wednesday by Nielsen Media Research.

Sunday’s deciding game of the series matching the Indiana Pacers and the Chicago Bulls put up dominating numbers--surpassing the viewing record set during last year’s final playoff round, while more than doubling the audience for any entertainment show except “Seinfeld.” Basketball also assisted in easy NBC victories on Wednesday and Friday of last week.

With most popular series in reruns and networks burning off leftover episodes of canceled shows, newsmagazines remained the only other reliable ratings draw. Some programs weathered the NBA storm better than others, with basketball draining viewers from Fox’s “The X-Files,” while “Unsolved Mysteries” scored its highest rating since joining CBS’ Friday lineup in April.

The farewell telecast of HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show” attracted 2.3 million viewers Sunday, ranking 29th among last week’s cable offerings.

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Cable Top 10

Here are Nielsen’s top 10 cable programs in prime time last week, also ranked by total viewers (in millions).

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Program Network Viewers 1. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) USA 4.92 2. Wrestling (Mon., 9 p.m.) TNT 4.76 3. Wrestling (Mon., 8:57 p.m.) USA 4.73 4. South Park COMC 4.55 5. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) TNT 4.55 6. “A Bright Shining Lie” HBO 4.45 7. Wrestling (Mon., 8 p.m.) TNT 4.41 8. Rugrats NICK 3.62 9. Wrestling (Wed.) TBS 3.38 10. “Face/Off” HBO 3.37

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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.

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Last week Season to date NBC 13.93 million 14.76 CBS 9.84 13.91 ABC 9.24 12.07 FOX 7.32 10.42 WB 3.57 4.45 UPN 2.70 3.96

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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. “What Deaf Man Heard” KCBS 736,357 2. Seinfeld KNBC 896,283 3. Friends KNBC 641,181 4. Just Shoot Me KNBC 596,098 5. Dateline NBC (Tue.) KNBC 581,071 6. 60 Minutes KCBS 576,061 The Drew Carey Show KABC 576,061 8. Touched by an Angel KCBS 556,025 9. The Simpsons KTTV 551,015 Veronica’s Closet KNBC 551,015

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