‘Season for Miracles’ Gives CBS Hallmark Week

The “Hallmark Hall of Fame” maintained its golden reputation with “A Season for Miracles,” which along with holiday specials presented CBS its second straight weekly ratings win, according to viewing estimates issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

The Hallmark production featuring Carla Gugino surpassed every CBS movie this season except “One Special Night,” the Julie Andrews-James Garner pairing broadcast a week earlier.

With “Friends” and “ER” both in reruns (along with numerous other series), “Frasier” stood out as NBC’s shiniest ornament, as an episode advancing the Niles-Daphne subplot helped the show attract its biggest audience since Sept. 30. Even so, Fox received a boost from the Billboard Music Awards and “Greed” to eke out first place for the week among adults ages 18 to 49, the key sales demographic to advertisers, for the first time this season. ABC, by contrast, slipped to third overall, which hadn’t happened since before the quiz show hit “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” returned in early November. The network gets that much-needed lifeline back next month.

The tag team of UPN and “WWF Smackdown!” pinned rival WB--which also ran a number of repeats--for the second straight week.

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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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Net- View- Program work ers 1. Sunday Night Football ESPN 9.97 2. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) USA 7.70 3. Thursday Night Football ESPN 7.34 4. Wrestling (Mon., 9 p.m.) USA 6.40 5. NFL Primetime ESPN 4.70 6. Wrestling (Sun., 7 p.m.) USA 4.30 7. Wrestling (Mon., 8 p.m.) TNT 4.26 8. “The Shawshank Redemption” TBS 4.22 9. “Witness Protection” HBO 4.10 10. Doug NICK 3.71

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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 Season week to date CBS 12.29 million 13.18 NBC 11.07 13.55 ABC 10.76 12.61 FOX 9.75 9.23 UPN 3.92 3.88 WB 3.18 4.12

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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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Sta- House- Program tion holds 1. Frasier KNBC 965,399 2. “A Season for Miracles” KCBS 785,670 3. Friends KNBC 729,184 4. Jesse KNBC 708,644 5. Stark Raving Mad KNBC 672,698 6. The X-Files KTTV 616,212 60 Minutes KCBS 616,212 8. The Practice KABC 611,077 9. Billboard Music Awards KTTV 595,672 10. 20/20 (Fri.) KABC 585,401

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