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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Nbc Finishes Week At Top Of Ratings

Associated Press

Reruns of NBC’s “Friends,” “Seinfeld” and “ER” lifted the network to a narrow victory in the weekly prime-time ratings.

NBC won the top three spots with just 47 percent of the TV audience tuned to the Big Three networks.

Original editions of ABC’s “20-20” and “PrimeTime Live” and Tuesday’s “Dateline NBC” finished fourth, sixth and seventh, respectively.

For the week of July 24-30, NBC led with an 8.3 rating and a 16 percent share of the audience. ABC was a close second with an 8.1 rating, 16 share, just one-tenth of a ratings point ahead of CBS’ 8.0 rating, 15 share.

The Fox Broadcasting Co., programming only 15 of the 22 prime-time hours, had a 4.9 rating, 10 share.

A single ratings point equals 954,000 households, or 1 percent, of the nation’s 95.4 million TV homes. Share is the percentage of sets tuned to a given network in a specific period.

Here are the Top 10 shows, their networks and ratings:

“Friends,” NBC, 17.1; “Seinfeld,” NBC, 14.0; “ER,” NBC, 13.8; “20-20,” ABC, 13.7; “Home Improvement,” ABC, 13.1; “PrimeTime Live,” ABC, 13.0; “Dateline NBC (Tuesday),” NBC, 11.7; “Murphy Brown,” CBS, 11.7; “CBS Sunday Movie: There Was a Little Boy,” CBS, 11.6; “Cybill,” CBS, 11.5.