Despite ‘Duke’s’ Wealth of Viewers, CBS Is Third

CBS’ “Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke” tapped into a rich ratings vein Sunday but couldn’t save the network from its first third-place finish since early January, based on results issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

ABC held its own against the Lauren Bacall miniseries with the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and “The Practice,” which posted the legal drama’s second-highest rating this season. The concluding chapters of another sweeps-timed miniseries, “Storm of the Century,” also gave ABC a significant boost, including the network’s highest-rated Thursday since an earlier Stephen King production, “The Stand,” aired in May 1994.

Despite that stiffer-than-usual competition, “ER” jumped almost 20% above its average audience for new episodes due to George Clooney’s farewell appearance, drawing its biggest crowd since the night of last May’s “Seinfeld” finale.

NBC’s “Law & Order” and “Homicide” crossover--in which a story began on the former and ended on the latter--helped raise “Homicide” to its best rating since November 1997. Even so, Wednesday’s “20/20,” featuring a report on Phil Hartman’s death, attracted the ABC show’s biggest audience in 10 months.

Cable Top 10

Nielsen’s top 10 cable programs in prime time last week were unavailable at press time.

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 14.34 million 12.77 ABC 13.89 12.15 CBS 13.50 13.25 FOX 10.45 11.33

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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. Friends KNBC 1,186,208 2. ER KNBC 1,175,938 3. Frasier KNBC 1,114,317 4. 60 Minutes KCBS 955,129 5. Veronica’s Closet KNBC 888,372 6. Jesse KNBC 883,237 7. “Secret Life of Doris Duke” KCBS 754,860 8. Ally McBeal KTTV 739,454 9. Law & Order KNBC 734,319 10. The X-Files KTTV 703,509

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