‘20/20,’ ‘Home’ Help ABC Improve to No. 1

Monica Lewinsky’s “20/20” interview and the season’s top-rated “Home Improvement” paced ABC to its third win in 24 weeks this season as well as the network’s biggest audience since last year’s Oscars, based on results issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

With NBC’s Thursday lineup in reruns, last Wednesday’s two-hour “20/20” featuring Lewinsky more than doubled viewing of the week’s most-watched series, CBS’ “Touched by an Angel,” who with its own angelic Monica captured that show’s highest rating in nine weeks. ABC’s highlights also included another solid showing by “The Practice” and even a bit of success repeating “The Drew Carey Show” and “Spin City” against NBC’s Thursday comedies, though “Frasier” and “Just Shoot Me” still scored lopsided victories.

Another heavily promoted sweeps special, “Opening the Lost Tombs: Live From Egypt,” unearthed Fox’s highest Tuesday rating this season for anything but the World Series, exceeding the network’s average tune-in that night by more than 6 million viewers.

CBS struck down the competition Saturday with the new “Walker, Texas Ranger” spinoff, “Sons of Thunder.”

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 ABC 14.89 million 12.24 CBS 13.13 13.33 NBC 12.11 12.82 FOX 10.27 11.28 WB 4.61 4.65 UPN 3.01 2.78

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Southland Viewing

Here are Nielsen’s top 5 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. 20/20 (Wed.) KABC 1,930,798 2. The X-Files KTTV 914,048 3. 60 Minutes KCBS 857,562 4. Frasier KNBC 842,156 5. Friends KNBC 831,886

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