ABC Edges Out NBC With ‘I Love Trouble’

With viewing levels depressed by Christmas- week festivities and a glut of reruns, the Julia Roberts movie “I Love Trouble” brought a little much-needed cheer to ABC, helping lift the network to only its third first-place finish in this season’s 14 weeks, based on results issued Wednesday by Nielsen Media Research.

ABC barely edged NBC, which had the misfortune of having Christmas fall on Thursday, putting a damper on what’s usually its strongest night. ABC also closed the “Monday Night Football” season with solid numbers and received a boost from its latest “Behind Closed Doors” special hosted by Joan Lunden, which beat the Tuesday edition of “Dateline NBC.”

Even airing mostly against reruns, beyond football the few original programs didn’t do particularly well. Viewing of “The Kennedy Center Honors” special dropped nearly 30% compared to last year, while “I Love Trouble” delivered nearly twice as many viewers Sunday as CBS’ remake of “The Sunshine Boys.”

Overall, last week’s ratings reflect an ongoing decline in viewing of the major television networks, with the combined audience for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox down 8% compared to the corresponding period last season.

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Network Averages

Here is the number of viewers that each network averaged per hour of prime time, for last week and for the season.Last Week

ABC: 11.58 million

NBC: 11.51

CBS: 10.15

FOX: 8.55

WB: 3.80

UPN: 3.28

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Season to Date

NBC: 15.02 million

CBS: 13.70

ABC: 13.02

FOX: 10.68

UPN: 4.45

WB: 4.31

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Southland Viewing Here are Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. The rankings are based on the number of households watching.

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Program Station Households 1. Mon. Night Football KABC 811,495 2. 60 Minutes KCBS 796,468 3. The X-Files KTTV 711,311 4. Seinfeld KNBC 576,061 5. Touched by an Angel KCBS 546,006 6. “I Love Trouble” KABC 530,978 7. Veronica’s Closet KNBC 505,932 8. The Simpsons KTTV 500,923 9. “Behind Closed Doors” KABC 485,895 10. ER KNBC 475,877

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Source: Nielsen Media Research