The real reason why they reaired the Finale tonight

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - NBC is counting on its well-heeled "Friends" to devalue ABC's "Millionaire" in a pivotal showdown Wednesday night on the final day of May sweeps.

The sweeps race for the key advertiser demo of adults 18-49 is headed for a photo finish, with NBC holding a precarious advantage over ABC and two days remaining to be counted.

NBC, whose lead had been reduced to a bit less than two-tenths of a ratings point through Monday, is looking to fortify its chances of winning for the sixth consecutive May by airing a rebroadcast of last week's hour-long "Friends" season finale opposite ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The network had scheduled "Dateline" for the slot.

NBC feels the Wednesday 8 p.m. hour is key because the networks could be in a virtual tie after Tuesday's results and ABC has a potential big ratings score Wednesday with Michael J. Fox's farewell on "Spin City" at 9. NBC will follow "Friends" with two first-run episodes of "Law and Order" from 9 to 11.

An ABC victory would give the network a clean sweep of the season's sweeps periods in adults 18-49, having posted narrow victories over NBC in November and February. ABC won more comfortably in homes and total viewers in the earlier sweeps, and has an insurmountable advantage over NBC this month.

NBC won the week of May 15-21 in adults 18-49 -- its third in the last four weeks -- to move into the sweeps lead. The network placed the top three shows in the demo during the period, led by blockbuster season finales for "ER" (17.5 rating, 44 share), "Frasier" (17.0/41) and "Friends" (16.0/44). Fox's "Beverly Hills 90210" series finale (8.5/22) and "The X-Files" (8.5/20) rounded out the top five.

Combined, the six networks were up 5% in adults 18-49 vs. the same week last year (22.5 vs. 21.4). NBC joined ABC and UPN in posting demo increases, while CBS was even and Fox down just 4%.

In total viewers, ABC won for the 21st consecutive week, although NBC pulled to within 530,000 viewers -- the closest any network has been during the streak.

The most-watched programs last week were "ER" (34.59 million), "Frasier" (33.70 million), "Friends" (30.73 million), Sunday's "Millionaire" (27.73 million) and Tuesday's "Millionaire" (23.57 million).

..No real surprise here, but it's not like they did it so people who missed it because of bad weather could see it, but so they could win the sweeps period. Typical network move.

====== "Life is never without love" -Sheryl Crow

*sniff* they are so heartless :(

~Act

You actually thought for a minute that they *cared*?

This really doesn't make much sense to me. Frasier aired oppisite WWTBAM and still attracted more viewers than Friends. So now they are putting a Friends rerun up against a new episode of something that consistently kicks ass on everything. Everyone knows what will happen, and the only people who care enough about C&M to want to watch it again probably taped it. Wouldn't it make more sense to stick with something that works?

"Mislead" wrote in message news:[email].:

Anything that takes away extra airings of Dateline is OK in my book :) I'm glad they reaired it. When I taped it last Thursday, it was shrunken, and had storm crawlers running on the bottom, and a huge storm map over the area occupied by the NBC "olymipic bug"

I tried to retape it editing out the commercials, but I ended up messing up it. Also they were scrolling the storm watch thing here too, so I thought I could get rid of that too. Unfortunitly we had a storm warning wednesady too. So I accomplished nothing by taping it twice except having antoher copy with a missing half of a scene.

~Act

Well some people did miss it (lol didn't you see the I missed it messages?) But the reason I think they choose Friends rather than Frasier was overall Friends ranks higher than Frasier (at least according to my Entertainment Weekly). I really don't get the popularity of Who wants to be a millionaire, I can't see how the ratings can last like that forever. I think it's gonna get a lot of backlash, much like Friends did after it reached it's popularity peak. Interestingly alot of people are talking about the 13% decline in viewership on Friends,(blaming it on various factors like C&M, the overall bad writing, supposedly bad season 6). but Fraiser had a 15% decline this season, and so did many other big name shows like Ally Mcbeal (-13%) and the X-files (-18%). I got this straight from the EW (May 26, Friends cast on the cover). I just found that rather interesting.

Speaking of the article, If I would have known it was so short I wouldn't have bought the mag (it was wrapped in plastic so they could include a stinkin free aol trial disk). Instead of any recent pictures it had an ugly drawing of them instead. Check it out at the library if you have to read it. The article basically rehashed what we already knew, that Kudrow & Schwimmer were the ones dragging their feet. According to the article those 2 had to be persuaded by the rest of the cast to sign on. Supposedly the other 4 were ready to sign deals last year, but Lisa convinced them they could get a better deal if they waited. Yawn.

====== "Life is never without love" -Sheryl Crow

EsotericGrrrl wrote:

I'm not sure about all those shows, but a big reason Frasier's ratings were down was because of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.