NEW YORK (AP) – Fans of “ER” apparently don’t make house calls in the summer.

A repeat episode of one of television’s most popular and long-running dramas was seen by barely 4.6 million viewers last week, providing a stark illustration of how poorly serial dramas fare in the rerun market.

In the same time slot, CBS’ “Without a Trace” had 12.6 million viewers and was second only to “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” as the week’s most popular prime-time program, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.

“ER” ranked No. 68. During the regular TV season, when first-run episodes were shown, “ER” averaged 19.5 million viewers, to 16.9 million for “Without a Trace.”

With many more choices on the dial, viewers seem less interested in following a story, especially if they saw it once before.

Self-contained dramas, however, are much stronger in repeats, and it’s one of the reasons CBS is dominating this summer in network TV. Six of Nielsen’s top 10 programs last week were reruns of dramas that tell a story that begin and end in an hour, and four of them were on CBS.

CBS is hardly immune to the problems of serial dramas: “Joan of Arcadia” ranked No. 81 last week, with only 3.8 million viewers. First-run episodes averaged 10.1 million this past season.

Meanwhile, the premiere of Fox’s new reality series, “Trading Spouses,” was the network’s second most popular show of the week, with 7.5 million viewers. That could be good or bad news for ABC. Fox rushed the show on the air because ABC has a similar series, “Wife Swap,” on the fall schedule.

CBS won the week with an average of 7.9 million viewers (5.4 rating, 10 share), and beat NBC by a whisker among viewers aged 18-to-49. NBC averaged 6.6 million viewers (4.6, 8), ABC had 5.7 million (3.8, 7), Fox had 5.1 million (3.3, 8), UPN had 2.4 million (1.6, 3), the WB had 2.2 million (1.5, 3) and Pax TV had 930,000 (0.6, 1).

On the eve of the Democratic national convention, NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.6 million viewers (6.0, 13). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 8.3 million viewers (5.9, 13) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.6 million (4.8, 10).

For the week of July 19-25, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 13.1 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 12.6 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 11.5 million; “The Amazing Race 5,” CBS, 11.1 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 10.7 million; “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS, 10.7 million; “Law & Order,” NBC, 10.6 million; “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC, 9.9 million; “Cold Case,” CBS, 9.5 million; “60 Minutes” (Sunday), CBS, 9.5 million.

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On the Net:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com

AP-ES-07-27-04 1705EDT