NBA Finals Lead NBC Past Slumping Opponents

NBA basketball coverage scored another lopsided win for NBC, easily surpassing last year’s playoff ratings, according to results issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

Three games into the championship series, which continues tonight, viewing of the games has surged 16% over 1997. Even so, the general network malaise continues, with viewing of the four major networks down 5% versus the corresponding week a year ago and even NBC’s audience experiencing a small decline despite basketball.

CBS tried to spice up the reruns menu by premiering a comedy starring Judith Light, “The Simple Life,” which drew modest ratings but out-performed “The Nanny” repeat that preceded it.

Sunday’s audience for the Tony Awards dropped 9% compared to last year, finishing behind the ABC movie “Fighting for My Daughter.” Still, the rating exceeded CBS’ results from the 1994 to 1996 Tony telecasts. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

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. “Men in Black” HBO 6.35 2. Wrestling (Mon., 8:57 p.m.) USA 4.72 3. “Ghost” TBS 4.57 4. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) USA 4.56 5. Wrestling (Thur., 9:03 p.m.) TBS 4.31 6. Wrestling (Mon., 8 p.m.) TNT 4.26 7. South Park COMC 3.94 8. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) TNT 3,87 9. MTV Movie Awards MTV 3.85 10. Sex and the City HBO 3.84

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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 14.28 million 14.74 CBS 9.35 13.78 ABC 8.45 11.97 FOX 7.04 10.33 WB 3.52 4.43 UPN 2.68 3.92

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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. 60 Minutes KCBS 741,366 2. Seinfeld KNBC 731,348 3. ER KNBC 676,246 4. Tony Awards KCBS 586,080 5. Frasier KNBC 581,071 6. “Fighting for My Daughter” KABC 576,061 7. Friends KNBC 571,052 8. Just Shoot Me (Tue.) KNBC 556,025 9. Just Shoot Me KNBC 551,015 10. Ally McBeal KTTV 540,997

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