‘Marshals’ Has Fast Draw; ‘61*’ Hits With Power

“On Golden Pond” failed to make much of a splash while “U.S. Marshals” exhibited some firepower by nabbing NBC’s biggest movie audience since December in the first key Sunday showdown of the ratings sweeps, based on viewing estimates issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

Still, the weekend’s closest thing to a home run belonged to a network that doesn’t need to worry about boosting ratings to impress advertisers. That would be pay channel HBO, whose baseball film “61*,” starring Barry Pepper as Roger Maris, averaged 4.6 million viewers Saturday, despite being available in less than a third of U.S. homes.

CBS’ live production of “On Golden Pond” with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer fared considerably worse than a staging of “Fail Safe” last year. ABC’s premiere of Disney’s animated “Tarzan” also swung off with only modest ratings but did yield the network’s biggest “Wonderful World of Disney” audience in six weeks.

“Survivor,” meanwhile, took a surprising dip to its smallest audience for the second edition with Thursday’s penultimate episode, though that was enough to surpass NBC’s “Friends” by more than 10 million viewers. Barbara Walters’ “20/20” interview with Clinton pardon figure Denise Rich didn’t generate significant tune-in, trailing “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” in its Friday slot.

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 CBS 11.99 million 12.68 NBC 11.75 11.53 ABC 10.26 12.68 FOX 8.85 9.68 UPN 3.70 3.74 WB 3.39 3.72

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