• by July 4, 2001

The jockeying for primetime Nielsen glory in the April-June period became so fierce among cable networks that, on the last day of the quarter, TBS trotted out Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan's hit movie "Rush Hour" and USA engineered an 11th-hour slotting of Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy."

When the hostilities ceased, the six top-rated cable networks ended up separated by only four-tenths of a point in the second quarter, led by Lifetime's first-place rating of a 1.9 in cable homes, a 12% jump from the same quarter a year ago.

TBS' "Rush Hour," which made its TV debut Sunday, put a damper on "Waterboy," which USA had played four times in the previous 18 days to much bigger audiences. All of the "Waterboy" runs, plus repeats of movies such as "Clear & Present Danger" with Harrison Ford, propelled USA into second place for the quarter. The network averaged a 1.8 rating in primetime, off by 18% from its 2.2 rating for the same period in 2000 (when World Wrestling Federation slamfests ruled USA's Monday-night schedule).

The 5.9 rating harvested by "Rush Hour" made it the highest-rated program for the entire second quarter, helping TBS to finish fifth overall in primetime with a 1.6 average rating in cable homes. Tied for third with a 1.7 rating were TNT, which was down 11% year to year, and Cartoon Network, which was flat from last year's second quarter.

TNT's stellar performers were a couple of NBA playoff games, multiple runs of "You've Got Mail" and the original movie "Boss of Bosses." Cartoon scored with a Bugs Bunny marathon and a special called "Toonheads: The Wartime Cartoons."

Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, A&E and Discovery finished sixth, seventh and eighth in primetime, but all three were down in ratings from second-quarter 2000, Nick by 13% and A&E and Discovery each by 8%. Disney Channel claimed a sixth-place tie with Nick, at a 1.5 rating, but most cable networks don't include Disney Channel in their reports because the network doesn't accept outside advertising.

In contrast to the declines of many of their competitors, TNN and History, which tied for ninth with a 1.0 primetime rating in cable homes, were up vs. the quarter last year. TNN climbed by 67%, a bigger increase than that of any other cable network during the period. History was up 11%. TNN's bellwether series is the two-hour WWF wrestling matches every Monday, which the network got after outbidding USA for the rights. Of the top 23 programs for the quarter, 17 were WWF hours.

In the two most-scrutinized primetime demographics in cable -- adults 18-49 and adults 25-54 -- Lifetime wound up only fourth for the quarter, behind TNT, USA and TBS, in that order. But Lifetime is the only one of the four that's up slightly in the demos year to year.

Among other highlights of the second-quarter Nielsens:

- Fox News Channel continues its audience growth in primetime, averaging a 0.7 rating, which is 40% above that of last year's second quarter. Fox's toughest 24-hour-news competitor, CNN, stayed even year-to-year with a 0.6 rating, as did CNBC and MSNBC, each with a 0.4 rating. Since CNN (81.8 million subscribers) gets into more homes than Fox News (67.7 million), more households actually watched CNN than Fox News in primetime during the quarter despite Fox News' higher rating.

- Outside of the top 10, four powerful networks fell by double digits in second-quarter primetime: ESPN2 (20%), ESPN (18%), American Movie Classics (13%) and MTV (11%).

- Also outside of the top 10, eight networks shot up by double digits. In order of their ranking, the eight were: Learning Channel (up 13%), FX (14%), Fox News (40%), BET (20%), Food (25%), Travel (33%), Bravo (33%) and Odyssey Channel (33%).

- Reuters/Variety