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ABC held off CBS’s sitcoms last night to win households and adults 18-49 with “Monday Night Football.” “Everybody Loves Raymond” won the 9 p.m. half-hour in households and adults 18-49, and “Becker” won households at 9:30 p.m., but “MNF” took a commanding win in both audience categories at 10 p.m. Part two of NBC’s miniseries “Uprising” held onto 95 percent of its Sunday night household audience and 80 percent of its adult 18-49 audience to give NBC a third place finish for the night. Meanwhile on Fox, its Monday night shows seem to have fallen out of favor. “Boston Public” dropped 14 percent of its household rating and 20 percent of its adult 18-49 rating from its debut last week. In a vast improvement from last week, “Ally McBeal” retained 92 percent of “Boston Public’s” household audience and built on its demographic lead-in by 2 percent, but neither “Boston Public” nor “Ally” was in contention to win their hours. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share and adult 18-49 rating for Monday were: ABC 10.9/17 and 6.3, CBS 10.2/15 and 5.7, NBC 7.6/12 and 3.5, and Fox 7.3/11 and 5.1. On Sunday, nothing could match the ratings draw of game seven of the World Series on Fox Sunday night, not the Emmy Awards on CBS or part one of the miniseries “Uprising” on NBC. Without adjusting for time zone differences, the baseball game averaged a preliminary 20.7/29 household rating and share and a 12.7, adult 18-49, rating from 8-10 p.m. The twice-delayed Emmy Awards averaged a preliminary 11.4/17 and 6.2 from 8-11 p.m., and “Uprising” managed a 8.5/13 and 4.7 against its tough competition from 9-11 p.m.. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share and adult 18-49 rating for Sunday night were: Fox 17.8/26 and 11.1, CBS 11.4/17 and 6.1, NBC 7.1/10 and 3.5, and ABC 6.9/10 and 4.4.
Booted Ziff CEO sues owners for $300M
Ziff Davis Media's ex-CEO, James Dunning, is looking to reunite with former partners Avy Stein and John Willis--in court. Dunning was pushed out of Ziff Davis in August and replaced with former Disney executive Robert Callahan. Now he is seeking more than $300 million in damages from Stein and Willis, who own the company, according to the New York Post’s Keith Kelly. The suit levels a smorgasbord of charges, including breach of contract, age discrimination, defamation of character, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Willis and Stein have filed a countersuit. Meanwhile the shakeups keep coming at Ziff-Davis, which Willis Stein & Partners bought for $780 million in April of last year. In the latest move, Interactive Week has been folded into sister publication eWeek, with 75 employees losing their jobs as a result.
PBS cuts 10% in second round of layoffs
It’s layoff time again at PBS, where 59 jobs have been eliminated in a round of cost-cutting that the network says should help it save about $7 million a year. Only 27 people actually got pink slips, with the rest of the cuts coming from unfilled positions. In March, PBS trimmed about the same number of jobs, bringing the total chopped to about 20 percent of its 620-person pre-layoff workforce. PBS, which is facing antsiness on the part of the corporate underwriters that keep it in business, says it will also close its Midwest programming office, reduce travel budgets and scrap the PBS Select program that helps small shows get distribution. Meanwhile the network has named Wayne Godwin as its new executive vice president and chief operating officer, overseeing all operations except programming.
Old mail suspected in new NY Post anthrax case
The New York anthrax outbreak has, thankfully, slowed to a trickle, but at the New York Post, a third employee has been diagnosed with the less-dangerous skin form of anthrax. Mark Cunningham, the paper's editorial page editor, first noticed an unfamiliar pimple on Tuesday, Oct. 23, not long after he'd been sifting through some old mail at the office. By Sunday the pimple had turned gray. He is currently on the antibiotic Cipro and is expected to recover fully. Mayor Giuliani noted the age of the mail, which dated back to September, thus giving the authorities "a hypothesis to work with," he said, according to the New York Daily News. This most recent case brings the skin anthrax cases among New York media to seven, including one apiece at CBS and ABC, and two at NBC. No symptoms of anthrax or any lesions have been reported at City Hall, where a package tainted with anthrax was unknowingly sent by NBC and handled by approximately four to five people. There are no plans for any testing of the staff.
New TV trend: the supersized hour
Is the 44-minute hour a thing of the past? It's starting to look like it. Tonight's musical "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" will run 68 minutes, commercials included, on UPN. Pilots for two new series with big hit potential, WB's "Smallville" and ABC's "Alias," were allowed 68 and 69 minutes, respectively. Executives at all three networks say they gave the leeway out of respect for the material, which they felt would have been hurt with additional cutting. But fitting in all the material has proved slightly tricky. For "Alias," ABC aired less commercials but retained the revenue through a special sponsorship with mobile phone maker Nokia. Overruns do have benefits of their own, though. Last season NBC's "Friends" was extended by 10 minutes to keep viewers from switching to CBS's "Survivor 2." The network is employing the strategy again this month, with an extended 200th episode of "Frasier," complete with outtakes, airing Nov. 13, and a 67-minute celebrity edition of "Fear Factor" on the schedule two weeks later.
Pakistani paper gets anthrax letter
Journalists in Pakistan have joined their American counterparts in finding themselves targets of an anthrax attack that authorities say may or may not be connected to the ones here. The offices of the Daily Jang, Pakistan’s largest newspaper, were evacuated late last week after the contents of a powder-filled envelope tested positive for anthrax spores. Jang, an Urdu-language paper, is based in the southern city of Karachi, a port on the Arabian Sea. No one at the paper has symptoms of infection, but about 70 employees who may have been exposed to the spores were placed on a prophylactic regimen of antibiotics. Two other businesses in Karachi, a bank and a computer equipment firm, have received anthrax-contaminated letters in the past two weeks. Unlike the anthrax letters sent to several New York media companies, the Daily Jang letter was hand delivered, and it was reportedly disguised as correspondence from a "social welfare organization."
November 6, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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