ABC Snaps Fox's 22-Week Win Streak

NEW YORK — With an assist from Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce, ABC snapped a Fox winning streak that had stretched back to January.

For 22 straight weeks, Fox had won the TV viewership competition among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that it aims for. ABC took first last week because of the three National Basketball Association games between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Sunday's fifth game had nearly 14 million people tune in to watch the Lakers stay alive. It's the second most-watched NBA finals series (behind only the 2004 Pistons-Lakers series) since ABC started broadcasting them in 2003. Overall, the series average of 14.6 million people beats last year by more than 5 million viewers.

Good thing ABC had the games. Only two other ABC shows were ranked in Nielsen's top 40:"The Bachelorette" and "20/20."

Although they aren't listed in Nielsen's ranking because they began in the afternoon, NBC's coverage of Tiger Woods' U.S. Open victory paid dividends for the network. The last two hours of NBC's golf coverage on Sunday night had 16.4 million viewers, Nielsen said.

Among all viewers, CBS won the week with a 7.2 million average (4.9 rating, 9 share). NBC 6.78 had million viewers (4.4, 8) and ABC 6.75 million (4.3, 8). Fox had 6 million (3.8, 7), the CW 1.7 million (1.1, 2), My Network TV 1 million (0.7, 1) and ION Television 320,000 (0.2, 0).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with an average of 3.4 million viewers (1.7 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 980,000 (0.6, 1), TeleFutura 470,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca 120,000 (0.1, 0).

On the week its Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert, died of a heart attack, NBC's "Nightly News" was the most-watched evening newscast with 8 million viewers (5.5 rating, 12 share). ABC's "World News" had 7.5 million (5.2, 11) and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.7 million (4.0, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,128,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 9-15, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NBA Finals Game 5: Boston at L.A. Lakers, ABC, 17.39 million; NBA Finals Game 3: Boston at L.A. Lakers, ABC, 14.51 million; NBA Finals Game 4: Boston at L.A. Lakers, ABC, 13.76 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 10.72 million; "NCIS," CBS, 10.16 million; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 9.42 million; "Million Dollar Password," CBS, 9.36 million; "48 Hours Mystery" (Tuesday), CBS, 9.21 million; "CSI: NY," CBS, 9.18 million; "So You Think You Can Dance" (Wednesday), Fox, 8.91 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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