Yankees a hit on NBC while UPN strikes out
WB's 'Felicity' going strong
Elsewhere in Oct. 13 primetime Nielsens, UPN's struggling Tuesday sked settled for less than a third of rival WB's 18-49 rating; CBS' Tuesday film increased in rating for a fourth-straight week; and ABC's "Sports Night" got brushed back by tough baseball competition.
Tuesday's Yankees-Indians telecast on NBC snagged a 12.9 rating, 22 share in homes and a 6.9/20 in adults 18-49, down a tenth from last year in homes and even in the 18-49 demo.
It's the highest primetime baseball rating since the night Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single-season home run record and Fox went home with a 12.9/21 in homes and an 8.0/22 in adults 18-49. NBC won the Oct. 13 ratings race by 6 shares in homes over CBS and 5 shares in adults 18-49 over ABC.
UPN struck out for the night, averaging a 1.7/3 in homes, down 19% from last week's wobbly premiere numbers (2.1/3) and down 41% from the netlet's year-ago result (2.9/5). Each UPN series -- "Moesha" (2.1/3 in homes), "Clueless" (1.9/3) and rookie "Mercy Point" (1.3/2) -- was down substantially from last week.
These results are a significant blow to UPN, which is already in trouble on Mondays and got off to a punchless start last Friday. The netlet will probably need to see major growth from those schedules to avoid significant financial losses on each of those nights.
Strong femme
The WB's strong rookie "Felicity" (3.9/6 in homes, 2.3/6 in adults 18-49) slipped a tenth in homes vs. last week but was up 27% over its lead-in from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in women 18-34 (a 3.8 rating vs. 3.0) and up 16% over "Buffy" in teens (6.5 vs. 5.6).
Both UPN and WB may have been particularly impacted by the huge 30.9/43 NBC's baseball did in the New York market. (Cleveland gave the game a still-higher 41.6/58.)
Tuesday's CBS movie, "Her Own Rules" (10.0/16 in homes, 3.6/10 in adults 18-49), skewed old but topped last week's Tuesday pic in homes, giving CBS a fourth consecutive week of growth in that slot. It was CBS' top-rated, regular-sked Tuesday since May 13, 1997.
ABC's 8:30 freshman "The Hughleys" (8.9/14 in homes, 5.9/16 in adults 18-49, down 12% from its 18-49 lead-in) fared better against baseball than 9:30 rookie "Sports Night" (7.8/12 in homes, 4.9/13 in adults 18-49, down 26% vs. lead-in).
Each household rating point represents an estimated 994,000 homes, or 1% of the country's TV households. Each adults 18-49 rating point reps 1.239 million viewers, 1% of the U.S. total. A share is the same sort of percentage, except it's measured against only the homes or viewers watching TV during the timeslot involved.
