‘Monday Night Football’ Gets Back to Its Game Plan

“Monday Night Football” delivered its biggest audience last week since the venerable franchise’s Labor Day premiere, while NBC’s Wednesday lineup brought some holiday cheer to that network, based on viewing estimates issued by Nielsen Media Research.

Delayed for a week by the last-minute resolution of the presidential election, original episodes of NBC’s “The West Wing” and “Law & Order” dominated their time slots, while the first-year drama “Ed” appears to be settling into its new location, attracting significantly higher ratings than the soap “Titans” had been drawing in that hour.

A matchup of St. Louis and Tampa Bay, meanwhile, generated a sizable audience for “MondayNight Football” on Dec. 18, the next-to-last game of the current season. Overall, viewing of “MNF” this season--with comedian Dennis Miller joining the broadcast team--finished off 6% compared with the previous year, though several mitigating factors reduced ratings, including the fact two games were televised opposite NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.

Viewing patterns were disrupted by the holidays, with several hit shows offering reruns. Ratings dropped, for example, for “60 Minutes” on Christmas Eve, while “60 Minutes II”--shown earlier in the week--drew a bigger audience, scoring its highest rating since March.

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 ABC 11.83 million 13.16 CBS 9.59 12.05 NBC 8.99 12.40 FOX 8.76 9.96 WB 3.77 4.16 UPN 3.40 4.17

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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. Law & Order KNBC 765,651 2. The West Wing KNBC 712,109 3. Friends KNBC 572,899 4. Will & Grace KNBC 567,545 5. Everybody Loves Raymond KCBS 524,712 Millionaire (Thur.) KABC 524,712 Millionaire (Wed.) KABC 524,712 8. Becker KCBS 519,357 9. Primetime Thursday KABC 497,941 10. ER KNBC 492,586

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