TV Ratings : ‘Friends’ Claims Two Spots in Top 10

Many Americans seem to have made “Friends” their best TV friend. The NBC comedy, with Lisa Kudrow, made a double appearance in the Top 10 last week, once for a rerun in its regular time slot of Thursday at 9:30 p.m., and the other for an outing in its soon-to-be new home of Thursday at 8 p.m.

Figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research showed that the rest of NBC’s Thursday lineup also placed in the Top 10--the Top 6, actually--and NBC was first overall among the 18- to 49-year-old crowd, the audience most sought by advertisers.

In terms of actual households reached during prime time, however, ABC was No. 1 for the week. It placed both “PrimeTime Live” and “20/20” in the Top 10--ahead of CBS’ “60 Minutes”--as well as “Monday Night Football.”

The first new series of the fall season, WB’s comedy “Kirk,” created by Ross Brown, attracted 5% of the available audience and ranked 87th among the week’s 92 prime-time network programs. That still made it one of the biggest draws thus far for the fledgling network.

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Southland Ratings

Here are A. C. Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. Each rating point equals 50,064 households.

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Program Network Rating 1. Seinfeld KNBC 17.5 2. Friends KNBC 17.2 3. ER KNBC 14.8 4. Home Improvement KABC 13.4 5. Mad About You KNBC 13.0 6. The Simpsons KTTV 12.7 7. Married ... With Children KTTV 12.3 8. Frasier KNBC 11.8 - John Larroquette Show KNBC 11.8 10. Dateline NBC (Wed.) KNBC 11.6

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Weekly Averages

ABC: 9.2

NBC: 8.6

CBS: 8.0

FOX: 5.2

UPN: 2.7

WB: 2.5

Season to Date

ABC: 11.0

NBC: 10.7

CBS: 10.0

FOX: 6.8

UPN: 3.3

WB: 1.9

Source: A.C. Nielsen