Alphabet in the 'Blue'
Eye red hot with 'JAG'
NBC managed to stretch its sweeps-month lead in adults 18-49 to 0.2 rating points over Fox, but at the expense of an extra firstrun ''Just Shoot Me,'' which could prove costly to NBC as the season progresses.
At 8 p.m., ''JAG'' sailed to an 11.3 rating/18 share and a 3.9 rating in adults 18-49. That score is just a tenth of a point below the series record, set the previous week.
''NYPD Blue'' answered at 10 p.m. with a 12.6/21 in homes and a 7.7 rating in adults 18-49, for the show's top homes tally in more than 11 months. With cast regular Jimmy Smits headed toward an exit next week (in a dramatic heart transplant storyline), ABC is expecting at least one more big ''Blue'' number to boost its sweeps averages.
In adults 18-49, the sweeps tallies after 20 of 28 nights are: NBC, a 6.0/16 (down in rating by 13% vs. results for the same period last year); Fox, 5.8/16 (down 5%); ABC, 4.9/13 (down 12%); CBS, 4.0/11 (down 9%).
In homes, it's even tighter, with these standings: NBC, 9.5/15 (down 6%); CBS, 9.4/15 (down 9%); ABC, 8.6/14 (down 9%); Fox, 7.8/13 (down 2%).
NBC is clearly feeling the pressure and scrambling to avoid what would be embarrassing losses for the month. Last Saturday, NBC burned off an extra ''Pretender'' firstrun with little positive ratings impact. Then on Tuesday, the Peacock spent an extra ''Just Shoot Me'' firstrun, producing a modest but valuable 15% increase over the previous week's 18-49 rating in that slot with a ''Shoot'' rerun.
With generally just 22 firstrun episodes of any series to work with per year, the nets can ill-afford to use more than one firstrun a week unless some sort of significant ratings payoff results.
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.
