NEW YORK – In an otherwise quiet week of television, Howie Mandel channeled his inner Regis Philbin to help make NBC’s “Deal or No Deal” a winner.
NBC ran five hourlong episodes of the new game show at 8 p.m. EST and viewers were clearly intrigued. The shows made up one-third of Nielsen Media Research’s top 15 prime-time programs for last week.
The scheduling mirrored ABC’s approach at the beginning of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” trying to build momentum at a time when there was little else going on in TV. While “Deal” wasn’t the same sensation, it brought viewers to time slots where NBC has struggled.
NBC has ordered additional episodes of “Deal or No Deal” that likely will air in March, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Barbara Walters’ ABC News special on how different religions view heaven was another winner for the week before Christmas and Hanukkah, drawing 13.8 million viewers.
CBS won the week – as it has every week this TV season – with an average of 10 million viewers (6.5 rating, 12 share). NBC had 7.7 million viewers (5.0, 9); ABC 7.3 million (4.8, 9); Fox 6.8 million (4.0, 7); UPN 3 million (1.9, 3); the WB 2 million (1.4, 2) and Pax TV 380,000 (0.3, 0).
NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.6 million viewers (6.6, 13). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 8.5 million viewers (5.9, 12) and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.6 million (5.4, 11).
A ratings point represents 1,102,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 110.2 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of Dec. 19-25, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 20.33 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 18.93 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 17.7 million; “Out of Practice,” CBS, 15.01 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 14.37 million; “Deal or No Deal” (Wednesday), NBC, 14.1 million; “Barbara Walters Presents: Heaven: Where Is It? How Do We Get There?” ABC, 13.76 million; “Deal or No Deal” (Thursday), NBC, 13.49 million; “CSI: NY,” CBS, 12.67 million; “Deal or No Deal” (Tuesday), NBC, 12.58 million.
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AP-ES-12-28-05 1636EST
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