Basketball Boosts ABC In Ratings Race

NEW YORK (June 20, 2006) — ABC enjoyed increased viewer interest in the thrilling NBA championship series between Dallas and Miami, but the basketball still wasn’t enough to beat the rerun kings over at CBS.

Three games of the Heat-Mavericks duel were among the four most-watched prime-time programs last week, led at the top by the 14.3 million people who watched Game 5, according to Nielsen Media Research. A “CSI: Miami” rerun — a different kind of Miami heat — was the interloper.

Viewership for the NBA Finals overall is up 12 percent over last year’s series between the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons, Nielsen said.

NBC was stuck with the least-popular winter sport. Its sixth-game telecast of the Stanley Cup finals between Carolina and Edmonton drew 2.9 million viewers last weekend.

While the basketball helped ABC to a narrow win last week among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers advertisers love, CBS was the most popular network among all viewers. Eleven of the 13 reruns that populated Nielsen’s top 25 last week were CBS shows.

That’s by design: CBS favors series with stories that begin and end in each episode, instead of serials, because people are more inclined to watch reruns.

For the week, CBS averaged 8.1 million viewers (5.6 rating, 10 share), ABC had 6.8 million viewers (4.5, 8), Fox had 5.8 million (3.9, 7), NBC had 5.3 million (3.4, 6), UPN had 2.2 million (1.5, 3), the WB had 1.8 million (1.3, 2) and the i network had 580,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 3.2 million viewers (1.7, 3), Telemundo had 860,000 (0.5, 1) and TeleFutura had 630,000 (0.4, 1).

NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening-news ratings race, averaging 7.6 million viewers (5.3, 12). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 7.2 million viewers (5.2, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.5 million (4.6, 10).

A ratings point represents 1,102,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 110.2 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 12-18, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NBA Finals Game 5: Dallas at Miami, ABC, 14.32 million. “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 13.49 million; NBA Finals Game 3: Dallas at Miami, ABC, 12.25 million; NBA Finals Game 4: Dallas at Miami, ABC, 11.56 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 11.17 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 10.59 million; “So You Think You Can Dance” (Wednesday), Fox, 9.94 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 9.87 million; “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC, 9.71 million; “CBS Sunday Movie: What Women Want,” CBS, 9.56 million.