NEW YORK (AP) – After months of reruns, television viewers are eager for something new. Whoopi Goldberg and John Larroquette were the immediate beneficiaries.
“Whoopi” and “Happy Family,” two comedies starring the veteran actors, were surprise successes last week when NBC offered a sneak preview in advance of next week’s start to the television season.
Both finished among the five most-watched prime-time shows of the week, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday. “Whoopi” had a little more than 15 million viewers.
In on-air promotions, NBC is already declaring the two shows hits. Most everyone else in the television industry is holding off, waiting to see how those shows do against non-rerun competition.
But if NBC’s goal was to just get viewers to try the new shows, the strategy succeeded.
CBS’ “60 Minutes” scored its best ratings since March by featuring a rerun of a just-deceased musician, Johnny Cash, being interviewed by a long-deceased newsman, Harry Reasoner.
CBS won the week, averaging 9.3 million viewers (6.4 rating, 11 share). NBC had 8.7 million viewers (6.1, 10), and won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic popular with advertisers for the 16th straight week.
ABC averaged 8.1 million (5.4, 9), Fox had 5.6 million (3.7, 6), UPN had 3.4 million and the WB had 3.3 million (both 2.2, 4) and Pax TV had 930,000 (0.7, 1)
NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.3 million viewers (6.6 rating, 14 share). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 8.6 million (6.2, 13) and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.3 million (5.2, 11).
A ratings point represents 1,067,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 106.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of Sept. 8-14, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Monday Night Football: Tampa Bay at Philadelphia,” ABC, 19.4 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 15.8 million; “NFL Monday Showcase,” ABC, 15.3 million; “Whoopi,” NBC, 15.1 million; “Happy Family,” NBC, 14.7 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 13.3 million; “For Love or Money 2,” NBC, 12.3 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 12 million; “Dateline NBC”-Friday, NBC, 11.7 million; “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS, 11.4 million.
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AP-ES-09-16-03 1726EDT
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