Entertainment Weekly usually does it's YEARLY roundup of television ratings after the season finales have almost aired. ER came in 4th, after the three WWTBAM took the top three spots, thus making it the number one prime time drama in the US, with the viewer percentage drop of -3%...(is that a lot?). Anyway, I think NBC as a whole came in as number 4 (obviously). I still think that it's pretty good for ER to be the number one drama.. I mean, the millionaire show seems to be so hyped up right now that it's so inevitable that people will get tired of it in the future. The issue is on sale now.

-- samira (matb_west@chickmail.com), May 22, 2000

Answers

Response to EW Mention of ER

ER beats millionare when they show new episodes. However , whenever ER runs a repeat it lowers it averages. Millionare has never had repeats so its episodes are always firstrun unlike ER. I imagine if millionare showed repeats of old shows that its ratings would lower like ER's does

-- Brenda (jckwfan@aol.com), May 22, 2000.

Response to EW Mention of ER

What irritated me though about that article was it didn't cover the last two weeks. I'm pretty sure ER ended up having better ratings than "Millionaire" for at least one and maybe both on those two weeks. The numbers they gave were for highest individual ratings for episodes during the season. I don't know why they put the issue out before May sweeps were over! Even half over!

-- Diana (dilynne@juno.com), May 23, 2000.

Response to EW Mention of ER

It's kinda funny, but ER's reruns do better in the ratings than most other shows. Even the reruns are always in the top ten. I think this says a lot about the shows popularity.

-- Bliss (blissteach@hotmail.com), May 26, 2000.

Response to EW Mention of ER

I read in another article that ER's audience for the season dropped 2%. The article made it sound like this was not a big drop at all (translation, the show is not losing hardly any of its audience)

Personally I suspect ER lost some people, but gained almost as many new viewers. In fact, I know quite a few people who ONLY started watching ER this year - because of Goran Visnjic and because of the Lucy/Carter stabbing.

-- debbie (riccardoiii@aol.com), May 26, 2000.