NBC Rides ‘Asteroid’ to Commanding Sweeps Lead

NBC’s “Asteroid” flattened the prime-time competition Sunday, landing with the highest rating for any miniseries since “Queen” four years ago.

Based on figures released Wednesday by Nielsen Media Research, those stratospheric numbers helped lift NBC to an easy win last week and a commanding February sweeps lead. Starring Michael Biehn and Annabella Sciorra, “Asteroid” joins “Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Beast” in a line of much-hyped NBC miniseries to score big ratings, and its impact appeared to increase TV viewing in general. The competing Meryl Streep movie, “. . . first do no harm,” still did respectably, though “The X-Files” fell to its lowest rating this season.

The week’s lowlights nearly outnumbered the highlights, including record low ratings for original episodes of the long-running sitcoms “Grace Under Fire,” “Wings” and “NewsRadio.” NBC and ABC’s Tuesday comedy lineups were also hurt by Fox’s telecast of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “True Lies,” which captured that network’s biggest audience for a feature film ever.

NBC’s success extended beyond prime time, as “NBC Nightly News” ran its streak of first-place finishes to eight weeks, including one tie with former leader ABC.

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Here is the number of viewers that each network averaged per hour of prime time, for last week and for the season.

Last Week

NBC: 17.05 million

CBS: 13.75

ABC: 12.96

FOX: 12.15

UPN: 4.72

WB: 3.77

Season to Date

NBC: 15.51 million

CBS: 13.94

ABC: 13.93

FOX: 12.24

UPN: 4.54

WB: 3.66

Southland Viewing

Here are Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. The rankings are based on the number of households watching.

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Program Station Households 1. ER KNBC 1,329,516 2. Seinfeld KNBC 1,250,437 3. “Asteroid” Part 1 KNBC 1,072,509 4. The Naked Truth KNBC 1,057,662 5. Friends KNBC 934,121 6. NYPD Blue KABC 869,869 -- The Single Guy KNBC 869,869 8. 60 Minutes KCBS 785,848 9. The X-Files KTTV 751,251 10. “True Lies” KTTV 736,424

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Source: A.C. Nielsen