Magazine strips chart big syndie gains
One of the big winners of the sweeps, meanwhile, appears to be Buena Vista TV's morning show "Live With Regis & Kathie Lee," which equaled last week's performance with a 4.6 household rating, up 18% over its performance for the same week last year, the highest gains of any first-run strip.
Paramount's late night strip "The Arsenio Hall Show" (2.8) was up over the prior week but ran off 20% from its year-ago performance, while "Donahue" and "Sally Jessy Raphael" (5.5) both bettered their Nov. 2 week results but slid more than 10% year-to-year.
With titillating sweeps fare filling up the magazines, shows like Fox's "A Current Affair" and Paramount's "Hard Copy" and "The Maury Povich Show" (4.8) all posted season-high ratings, while King World's "Inside Edition" improved by 14% over the same week in '91.
Bill Cosby had an up-and-down week on the syndicated front, as "You Bet Your Life" (4.8) was down 4% from the previous week but off-network airings of "The Cosby Show" ticked up a tenth. Still, "Cosby" has slowed down, off more than 30% compared to a year ago.
Among new shows, Multimedia's "Rush Limbaugh" (3.3) continues to post some of the weightiest ratings among talk strips, although Group W's "Vicki" (2.5) improved over the prior week. Genesis' "Whoopi Goldberg" was flat at 1.8.
