Nbc Earns Top Spot In Weekly Nielsen Ratings

NBC took advantage of rival anchor Peter Jennings’ absence last week to score its biggest nightly news ratings win over ABC in a decade.

It was a bright spot in another desultory week for broadcast television, which saw viewership dwindle for virtually everything but newsmagazines during rerun season.

“NBC Nightly News,” with its 7.4 rating and 17 share, had its biggest margin of victory over ABC’s “World News Tonight” since September 1987. Jennings, ABC’s primary anchor, was on vacation last week while NBC’s Tom Brokaw worked for four days.

The ABC program’s 6.6 rating and 15 share barely beat the 6.4 rating and 15 share for the “Evening News” on CBS.

For the second straight week, seven newsmagazines landed among the top 16 shows for the week as viewers sought out new programming. A “Seinfeld” repeat was the week’s most-watched show, however.

NBC won the weekly network race with a 7.3 rating and 14 share. CBS was second with a 6.9 rating and 13 share, followed by ABC’s 6.1 rating and 12 share. Fox had a 4.4 rating and 9 share.

After an “X-Files” rerun, Fox’s best-rated show of the week was a special on UFOs.

A rating point represents 970,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 97 million TV homes. Share is the percentage of those televisions in use that are tuned to a given show during a specified time period.

Among the emerging networks, UPN had a 2.6 rating and 5 share, while the WB had a 2.2 rating and 4 share.

For the week of July 28-Aug. 3, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings, were:

“Seinfeld,” NBC, 12.4; “20/20,” ABC, 11.0; “E.R.,” NBC, 10.5; “Suddenly Susan,” NBC, 10.4; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 9.9; “Dateline NBC” (Monday), NBC, 9.8; “Dateline NBC” (Tuesday), NBC, 9.4; “Friends,” NBC, 9.4; “Touched By an Angel,” CBS, 9.4; “Law and Order,” NBC, 9.2.