Ratings Archives: June 1997

NBC dominated the ratings of June 1997. It took all four weeks of June with double digit leads over second place CBS. FOX was getting stronger and more consistent with its programming. The 10 year old network was inching closer to third place ABC, always within two ratings points. After 18 months, the WB was beginning to be competitive with UPN as the two young networks were usually with in a couple tenths of  a ratings point from each other.

Your weekly top programs was not a lot different than the regular season. SEINFELD, ER, FRIENDS, HOME IMPROVEMENT and so on. But as with most summer nights, news programs did better. Most weeks found 3 or four newsmagazines in the top 20. Some weeks, NBC would schedule 3 nights of DATELINE to take advantage of the increased viewership.

There were a few original programs airing in June, so lets have a quick look.

FOX was airing "new" episodes of its Saturday night staples, COPS and AMERICAS MOST WANTED. 15 years ago those programs were getting 7-9 million viewers, during the summer. Before they left the air last season, both series struggled to get 3 million viewers, during a regular season week.

FOX was also airing BEYOND BELIEF on Sunday nights. It would pull in about 7 million viewers, but would usually be  in 3rd place for the 7:00 p.m. time slot. It would obviously beat the WB programs, but it did consistently do better than ABC's SECOND NOAH, also a summer series. That series drew about an average of 5 million viewers.

Nielsen Broadcast ratings charts for
June 2 to June 29, 1997