NEW YORK, March 22 -- NBC's 'Seinfeld' continued its yo-yo climb on the top 10 Nielsen ratings list last week, reaching second place and challenging ABC's 'Home Improvement' for the No. 1 spot.
'Seinfeld' tookNo. 2 with a 20.9 rating and 33 percent share of the viewing audience for the week ending March 20, compared with 'Home Improvement's 22.9-34. It was up from No. 5 the previous week and had occupied the No. 3 spot the week before that.
The A.C. Nielsen Co. reported no surprises in ratings for the week ending March 20.
The usual suspects were on the most watched programs list including the CBS Sunday night movie, which took the 10th spot. It was 'Ultimate Betrayal,' a drama about sisters who accuse their father of sexual abuse, starring Marlo Thomas.
The one exception to the expected lineup was ABC's 'The Turning Point,' a news magazine program hosted by Barbara Walters which slipped into the No. 6 spot after making its debut the previous week in eighth place.
ABC was the dominant network for the second week in a row, snaring a rating of 12.9-21 and taking five of the top 10 program spots. It was trailed by CBS with 11.3-19 and NBC with 10.7-18.
Fox made a showing with 7.3-12 with 15 hours of prime time programming compared with the other networks' 22 hours.
ABC took Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. CBS dominated viewing on Monday, Tuesday and Sunday, and NBC claimed Thursday.
ABC took top honors as usual for the evening news with a 10.9 rating and 21 share, followed by CBS and NBC in a tie with 9.2-18 each. CBS said the figure did not reflect their Thursday and Friday newscasts because of some pre-emptions for NCAA basketball games.
Each ratings point represents about 942,000 households. A share is the percentage of TV sets in use that are tuned into a particular show or network.NEWLN: ------
The top 10 programs for the past week, according to Nielsen, were:
1. Home Improvement (ABC) 22.9-34.
2. Seinfeld (NBC) 20.9-33.
3. 60 Minutes (CBS) 20.5-25.
4. Frasier (NBC) 20.3-32.
5. Grace Under Fire (ABC) l9.1-28.
?. Turning Point (ABC) l7.2-29.
7. Murphy Brown (CBS) l6.8-26.
8. Roseanne (ABC) l6.8-26.
9. Home Improvement (R) (ABC) 16.2-26.
10. Sunday movie: 'Ultimate Betrayal' (CBS) 15.6-25.
