Finales -- and near finales -- dominated the first full week of the May ratings sweeps, as the last episode of NBC's "Friends" easily dominated with almost 52.5 million viewers. Coming in second was the show of highlights from the sitcom's 10 years, which also aired Thursday.
Two other spots in the top 10 went to the conclusion of CBS' "Survivor All-Stars" Sunday and the reunion special that followed it. The regularly scheduled "Survivor: All-Stars" episode Thursday just missed the top 10.
Scoring even better than those "Survivors" was Tuesday's "American Idol," on which the final five contestants competed.
And the penultimate episode of NBC's other long-running comedy, "Frasier," finished in 16th place, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The hoopla over the "Survivor" finale probably cut into the audience for ABC's broadcast premiere Sunday of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," which finished in 25th place.
Jonathan Taylor
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Here are the rankings for national prime-time network television last week (May 3-9) as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are 272.04 million potential viewers in the U.S. age 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions.
*--* Program Net- work View- ers Program Net- work View- ers
*--*
*--* 1 Friends NBC 52.46 2 "Friends Clips Special" NBC 36.89 3 ER NBC 28.37 4 "Survivor All-Stars Finale" CBS 24.76 5 "Survivor All-Stars Reunion" CBS 23.92
6 American Idol (Tue.) FOX 22.82 7 American Idol (Wed.) FOX 21.18 8 CSI CBS 20.39 9 "10.5," Part 2 of 2 NBC 19.87 10 Survivor: All-Stars CBS 19.21
11 CSI: Miami CBS 17.62 12 Everybody Loves Raymond CBS 17.27 13 Two and a Half Men CBS 16.20 14 Without a Trace CBS 16.04 15 Dateline: NBC (Wed.) NBC 14.71
16 Frasier NBC 14.33 17 CSI (Wed.) CBS 13.33 18 Law & Order: SVU NBC 13.04 19 Fear Factor NBC 12.32 20 Judging Amy CBS 12.21
21 Crossing Jordan NBC 11.86 22 "American Idol: Final Five" FOX 11.73 23 Law & Order: Criminal Intent NBC 11.64 24 60 Minutes CBS 11.46 25 "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" ABC 11.14
26 Scrubs NBC 11.10 27 24 FOX 11.09 28 Still Standing CBS 10.95 29 O.C. FOX 10.72 30 The Bachelor ABC 10.32
31 JAG CBS 10.16 32 Navy NCIS CBS 10.13 The Swan FOX 10.13 34 Extreme Makeover (Wed.) ABC 10.08 35 Law & Order: SVU (Sat.) NBC 9.85
