Americans are famous for having short attention spans. Americans are famous for having short atten … Oh, sorry, you looked like you weren’t listening. You know, all this short-attention-span stuff comes from a pop culture that moves at the speed of light. The MTV generation takes its information in soundbites and seizure-inducing video edits.
But, today, it is with great civic pride that we announce that America has finally found what it’s been looking for. In fact, at a whopping eight months and counting, America could not possibly be paying more attention. We could not be more unblinkingly fixated if we were strapped down and our eyes propped open with toothpicks to Regis Philbin.
Thanks, Reeg, from all of us. We are so proud.
Here’s an annotated look at primetime’s Top 10 for the TV week of March 6-12, according to the good folks at Nielsen Media Research. (Each ratings point equals little more than a million TV homes):
1. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Tuesday), ABC — 19.5 You know, it could be worse. We could just have easily been unblinkingly fixated on “Caroline in the City.” Then where would we be, huh?!
2. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Sunday), ABC – 17.5 Americans have been famous for some time now for having … what? We said that already? Sorry, we weren’t paying attention.
3. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Thursday), ABC – 17.2 OK, just as a practical joke, now that the network has signed Regis to a (reputed) $20 million contract, let’s all become unblinkingly fixated on the Nashville Network’s “Roller Jam” (code name for: professional roller derby) — and watch the ABC executives sweat.
4. “60 Minutes,” CBS – 14.7 Remember before game shows were the big thing, newsmags were the big thing? “60 Minutes,” at least, is still always in the Top 10. The other news magazines must be down somewhere near “Greed.”
5. “Friends,” NBC – 13.9 With just one show in the Top 10 this week, NBC might want to consider making 52 new episodes of “ER” a year to avoid the re-run drop off — the malady that apparently kept the doc show out of the upper echelon this time out.
6. “The Practice,” ABC – 13.4 OK, so that’s four of the Top Six spots going to ABC. Now check this out …
7. “Super Tuesday” election coverage (8 p.m.), ABC – 13.2 What the heck is this? Five minutes of ABC News’ live coverage of the “Super Tuesday” voting. The “special” aired during (what else?) “Millionaire.” In other words, Regis is so entertaining, he’s making Al Gore and George W. Bush seem worth watching.
8. “Touched by an Angel,” CBS – 12.9 Let’s see, nothing funny to comment about here. … Oh, wait … Della Reese’s hair!
9. “Super Tuesday” election coverage (9 p.m.), ABC — 12.0 OK, this was about 12 minutes that ran during the “Dharma and Greg” time slot (in most of the country). We’re guessing a lot of people were tuning in to see if John McCain was going to claim to be Luke Skywalker again.
10. “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS – 11.0 We’ve given it some thought and … you know, it’s true. He’s just a really nice man.
And in other ratings items of interest:
— ABC won the network battle (again), with an average 9.3 rating. CBS (8.3) finished second. NBC trailed (badly) with a 6.8, followed by Fox (5.7), UPN (2.6) and WB (2.2).
— NBC hit an all-time ratings low Sunday (for a nonsummer rerun night) when its combo of NBA basketball and “Donnie Brasco,” the Al Pacino gangster flick, managed a lowly (and average) 3.7 rating. How bad was it? More people watched “The Sopranos” on HBO than “Donnie Brasco” on NBC. Sure, “The Sopranos” is the better show, but HBO? Also not helping NBC’s cause was Discovery Channel’s “Raising the Mammoth.” The Sunday night special shattered the cable mark for highest-ever-rated documentary as well as highest-ever-rated “nonsporting event.” Memo to NBC: Bring on the woolly mammoths.
— In a bit of good news for the Peacock, the network’s “God, The Devil and Bob” finished in 15th place with a 10.1 rating. That’s two spots higher than “Jesse” did in the 8:30 Thursday time slot last week. But “Jesse” had the slightly higher rating with a 10.7. So, what does all that mean? It means that as long as “Friends” is on at 8 p.m., NBC can run whatever it wants at 8:30 p.m.
— Kathie Lee and Cody Gifford scored a respectable 8.1 rating for their Sunday night “Wonderful World of Disney” TV movie “Model Behavior.” In the Gifford home, the film scored a solid 98 percent share.
