Abc Tops Ratings In Last Week Of ‘97

With fewer people turning on their televisions for the holidays, ABC relied on “Monday Night Football” and Julia Roberts to narrowly win the ratings race for the last full week of 1997.

The prime-time audience of 48.6 million for the six broadcast networks during Christmas week was well below the season average of 61 million, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday.

ABC’s 7.6 rating and 14 share eclipsed NBC’s 7.5 rating and 14 share for the week. CBS was third with a 6.8 rating and 13 share, followed by Fox’s 5.6 rating and 10 share.

The Sunday night movie on ABC, Roberts’ “I Love Trouble,” soundly defeated the normally strong CBS Sunday movie, a remake of “The Sunshine Boys” starring Woody Allen and Peter Falk.

The week’s most-watched program was Monday’s football game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots.

A rating point represents 980,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 98 million TV homes. Share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

The “NBC Nightly News” handily won the evening news competition with an 8.6 rating and 17 share. The “CBS Evening News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight” finished tied for second with 7.9 ratings and 16 shares, though CBS had a slight edge in total viewers.

For the week of Dec. 22-28, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings were: “NFL Monday Night Football: New England at Miami,” ABC, 15.3; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 12.7; “Touched By an Angel,” CBS, 12.2; “NFL Monday Showcase,” ABC, 11.8; “ABC Sunday Night Movie: I Love Trouble,” ABC, 11.2; “Seinfeld,” NBC, 10.2; “Fox NFC Wild Card Post-Game Show,” Fox, 10.0; “CBS Special Movie: I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” CBS, 9.9; “Dateline NBC” (Monday), NBC, 9.3; “20/20,” ABC, 9.3.