NBC’s ‘ER,’ ‘Clock’ Leave Competition Grounded

NBC easily flew off with the weekly ratings crown behind its Thursday night royalty and Part 1 of the drama “Pandora’s Clock,” starring Richard Dean Anderson, as the airline thriller opened with the biggest rating for any network movie this season. “ER” also delivered its highest rating since February and was watched by nearly 37 million people, topping all prime-time programs.

Figures for last week, released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research, also showed that CBS’ “Touched by an Angel” again garnered its best ratings ever while ABC’s “Murder One” faded to its lowest numbers yet.

After losing a third of the audience tuning in its premiere, the third episode of Fox’s “Millennium” equaled the show’s rating from the previous week.

Partly due to low-rated election coverage on Tuesday, combined viewing of ABC, CBS and NBC fell by 9% compared to the corresponding week a year ago. Through Sunday, in fact, only Fox (which didn’t air election results) has shown any improvement compared to November sweeps averages to this point last year.

ABC was hardest hit by the preemption of its high-rated Tuesday lineup, which helped drop the network to third place (behind Fox) in the younger demographics most sought by advertisers.

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Southland Ratings

Here are A.C. Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. Each rating point equals 49,646 households.

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Program Station Rating 1. ER KNBC 25.9 2. Seinfeld KNBC 23.2 3. Friends KNBC 18.3 4. The Single Guy KNBC 17.9 5. Suddenly Susan KNBC 17.8 6. 60 Minutes KCBS 16.7 7. The X-Files KTTV 16.5 8. The Simpsons KTTV 14.9 9. “Pandora’s Clock” Part 1 KNBC 14.8 10. Chicago Hope KCBS 14.1

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Weekly Averages

NBC: 11.2

CBS: 9.8

ABC: 9.7

FOX: 8.2

UPN: 4.0

WB: 2.9

Season to Date

NBC: 10.9

CBS: 10.0

ABC: 9.8

FOX: 8.6

UPN: 3.4

WB: 2.8