• by May 31, 2001

National Basketball Assn. playoff games shot TNT's primetime schedule into first place among basic cable networks for May.

That's the good news. Unfortunately, audience disenchantment with pro basketball this season slashed 17% off TNT's average rating from May 2000. For the entire playoffs, TNT and TBS averaged only a 2.3 rating, down 18% from last year's 2.8 rating.

TNT's year-to-year decline mirrored the less-than-stellar Nielsen performance of most of the top-rated cable networks. Four more of the top 10 networks fell off by double digits in primetime May-to-May: USA (down 24%), Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite (17%), TBS (17%) and ESPN (21%).

Lifetime invoked bragging rights, saying it's the only top-10-rated cable network to go up in May, gaining 6% to a 1.7 average rating in primetime, No. 2 overall behind TNT.

Two top-10 networks wound up flat year-to-year: Disney Channel, at a 1.3 rating (seventh place overall), and Discovery, at a 1.0 (10th place).

TNN's two separate Monday night World Wrestling Federation hours, at 9 and 10, dominated the ratings for the month, grabbing eight of the 10 top-rated individual slots and propelling TNN into a tie for 11th place with the History Channel. TNN jumped 50% in primetime ratings from the previous May, when USA carried Monday night WWF cablecasts.

The best-rated primetime original movie for the month was Lifetime's "Sex, Lies & Obsession," which scored a 3.4 rating in cable homes May 7.

The highest-rated documentary special about Pearl Harbor was the History Channel's "Tora, Tora, Tora: The Real Story of Pearl Harbor," which averaged a 2.6 rating in cable homes Saturday, making it the most watched program ever on the History Channel.

Beyond TNN and FX, another seven cable networks grew in primetime by double digits in May (listed in order of their ranking): Learning Channel (up 14%), Comedy Central (20%), Fox News Channel (50%), Travel Channel (100%), Bravo (33%), MSNBC (33%) and Odyssey (100%).

- Reuters/Variety