NBC Has Answer for ABC’s 22-Week Winning Streak

ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”-fueled winning streak has ended at 22 consecutive weeks, as NBC passed the ball to the NBA basketball playoffs and outscored the Alphabet network for the first time since December, based on viewing estimates issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

Despite that milestone, the week’s big story was “Survivor,” the CBS series that subjects 16 ordinary people to various indignities on a remote island. Even facing an extra episode of “Millionaire,” the program--which ousts one of its “players,” beginning last week with a woman named Sonja, at the close of each hour--drew CBS’ highest regular-series rating in the 8 p.m. Wednesday slot in two years and gained viewers during the second half-hour, meaning those curious about the offbeat premise generally didn’t tune out.

“Survivor’s” second installment airs tonight, competing with the NBA Finals on the West Coast but preceding the game in the Central and Eastern time zones.

The news wasn’t all good for CBS. Rosie O’Donnell returned as host of the Tony Awards, but ratings still fell 7% from last year and 28%--or about 3.3 million viewers--versus 1998. The show did face stiff competition, including “Millionaire,” the Lakers-Trail Blazers conclusion and the third-season premiere of HBO’s “Sex and the City,” which saw its audience increase by more than 1 million viewers compared to last season’s debut.

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 NBC 10.65 million 12.21 ABC 10.51 14.10 CBS 9.81 12.31 6.54 8.85 UPN 3.47 3.92 WB 2.16 3.58

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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. Roggin’s Postgame (Sun.) KNBC 848,021 2. Millionaire (Thur.) KABC 779,970 3. Millionaire (Sun.) KABC 743,327 4. Millionaire (Wed.) KABC 664,807 5. Millionaire (Tue.) KABC 612,460 6. The Drew Carey Show KABC 596,756 7. Roggin’s Postgame (Tue.) KNBC 570,582 8. 20/20 Downtown KABC 554,878 9. Survivor KCBS 549,644 10. Friends KNBC 513,001

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