ABC Wins Week, but No Award for Oscar’s Showing

With the lowest-rated Academy Awards on record, ABC had a bit less to crow about even though the network handily won the week, based on viewing estimates issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

While the average audience of 42.9 million viewers for Sunday’s telecast hosted by Steve Martin was down 7% from last year, it was No. 1 across all demographics and teens. The tallies for ABC’s Oscar preview show and Barbara Walters’ annual interview special also lost ground from 2000.

Meanwhile, Fox flexed its muscle that evening with a repeat of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action film “True Lies,” which performed well among adults 18-49.

Good news for ABC came on Thursday, when the 8:30 p.m. installment of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” posted its best numbers in eight weeks and the newsmagazine “PrimeTime Thursday” topped a rerun of NBC’s “ER,” beating it for the second time this season.

On CBS, prime-time coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament scored yearly gains in viewers and key demographics.

On the midseason front, there was a slight drop for the second episode of ABC’s comedy “The Job,” but it fared better than NBC’s “First Years” and Fox’s “The Lone Gunmen,” which struggled on Monday and Friday nights, respectively.

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. The Sopranos HBO 7.40 2. Wrestling (Mon., 10 p.m.) TNN 6.41 3. Wrestling (Mon., 9 p.m.) TNN 5.51 4. Rugrats NICK 3.90 5. Boxing HBO 3.58 6. Taxicab Confessions HBO 3.47 7. “McLintock!” TBS 3.38 “Big Jake” TBS 3.38 9. Rocket Power NICK 3.37 10. “Nothing to Lose” USA 3.15

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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 ABC 15.55 million 13.05 CBS 11.91 12.57 FOX 9.29 9.90 NBC 9.02 11.83 UPN 3.10 3.83 WB 3.00 3.84

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