Bolstered by a powerful prime-time schedule and the hit miniseries, “Queen,” the highest rated since 1989’s “Lonesome Dove,” CBS Thursday won a lopsided victory in the February ratings sweep and predicted a season win by a comparable margin.
CBS ended the period with a rating of 15.1 and an audience share of 24. ABC was a distant second, with 13.0/21, leaving NBC at the bottom of the heap at 11.4/18. Fox, with its abbreviated schedule, posted an 8.3/13.0.
“We’re the No. 1 network, with the greatest growth still ahead of us,” said Peter Tortorici, entertainment executive vice president at CBS.
Locally, CBS’ solid prime-time performance and the start of live Illinois Lottery drawings at 10:20 p.m. helped WBBM-Ch. 2’s tabloid-style late news show draw closer to news leader WLS-Ch. 7, whose year-to-year audience grew nearly 2 ratings points at 10 p.m.
Final Arbitron numbers put WLS in front at 10 p.m. on weekdays, with a 16.7 rating and 26 share, leading WBBM (14.7/23) and WMAQ-Ch. 5 (13/20). Nielsen figures put WLS ahead with 17.3/26, then WBBM (16.5/25) and WMAQ (16.4/25). On a Monday-through-Sunday basis, the late newscasts showed a virtual three-way deadlock in the Nielsen poll (WLS and WMAQ, 16.5/25; WBBM, 16.4/25), with WLS dominating in Arbitron.
Sign-on to sign-off, ABC-owned Channel 7 continued to lead the field, winning all local time periods and easily outpacing WMAQ, WBBM and leading independent WGN-Ch. 9.
Nationally, CBS, a third-place underdog through six years of NBC supremacy, charged back into first place last year and now dominates both in household ratings and in the key 18-49 age group by which advertising agencies place their clients.
The three-network share for February is 63 percent, down from 66 percent last year, when the Winter Olympics was telecast. Independents, spurred by an expanding Fox network and the cable superstations, showed continued growth, to about a 15 percent combined share.
The “top-basic” cable share remained flat, at about 11 percent, showing virtually no movement in the last two years. Similar lack of growth was shown for premium cable penetration and PBS, at about 2.5 percent each.
Things should liven up in Chicago prior to the May sweeps period, as some key executives from up-and-coming WBBM have recently jumped ship, moving on to ratings wars in California or to competing stations here. It is expected that news shows at all the network-owned stations will undergo flashy makeovers, in line with WBBM’s current tabloid format.
One thing remains constant in all sweeps stories, however.
Oprah Winfrey continues to dominate her morning time slot here on WLS, with nearly 50 percent of the viewing audience. In February the show chewed up the latest new talk hope, “Live: Regis & Kathie Lee” (WBBM), which not only got lower ratings than “Perry Mason” reruns on WGN-Ch. 9, but had fewer viewers than when it was on at 4 a.m. on Channel 7.
A single national rating point represents 931,000 households (30,000 viewers per point in Chicago) and a share is the percentage of sets in use.
