NBC Tops Sunday Ratings with 10.5

Part one of NBC's 10.5 disaster movie registered big on the ratings scale, too.

The two-hour series of West Coast earthquakes averaged an 8.5 on the Nielsen scale for its second hour (10-11) and a 8.0 rating/19 share over its two hours to power the network to a nightly win in 18-49's (5.0/13) and households (8.4/14).

According to NBC, its the highest 18-49 rating for any movie on the network in five years (Noah's Ark, May 3, 1999). It improved the time period performance by a whopping 82%.
It was all the more impressive given that the Peacock was puttering along in a distant fourth place for the first two hours of prime time.

There was a tie for second on the night in 18-49s between ABC and Fox with a 3.9/11. ABC got there via America's Funniest Home Videos (3.0/10), Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (5.3/4), which won its time period, Alias ((4.0/9) and the second-to-last episode of The Practice (3.6/9).

Fox benefited from strong showings by back-to-back airings of King Of the Hill (a time period-winning average of 3.8/13), The Simpsons (4.5/12), and Malcolm in the Middle (3.4/8).

CBS was fourth in the demo with a 3.0/8 average for 60 Minutes, Cold Case, and the movie, Book of Ruth.

WB was fifth with a 1.3/4 for two outings of High School Reunion and Charmed.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.