• by June 27, 2001

News and games, including NBC's controversial "Spy TV," dominated the television ratings during a week of summer doldrums. Traditionally, the weeks surrounding the Fourth of July are the least-watched weeks of the year, and last week ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox averaged 28.4 million viewers, down from the 44.4 million average during the rest of the year, Nielsen Media Research said on Tuesday.

"Spy TV," which many critics derided as a mean version of "Candid Camera," had the third-highest viewership of any show last week. NBC said it was the most popular show among viewers aged 18-49, only the fourth time that a program is known to have done this with its premiere. NBC is also continuing to do well with the reality show "Fear Factor" on Monday nights.

ABC's new game show, "You Don't Know Jack," had a lukewarm start with 8.1 million viewers for its premiere. Its old game show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," took up the top three spots in the ratings.

Only three scripted programs were ranked in Nielsen's top 13 for the week. The rest were newsmagazines, game shows or reality shows.

CBS, with an average of 8 million viewers in prime-time (5.9 rating, 11 share), won a tight race for the week's ratings crown. ABC averaged 7.8 million viewers (5.5, 10), NBC had 7.7 million (5.3, 10), Fox had 4.9 million (3.3, 6), UPN had 3 million (1.9, 4), the WB had 2.4 million (1.7, 3) and Pax TV had 1.4 million (0.9, 2).

NBC's "Nightly News," which averaged 8.5 million viewers (6.4 rating, 15 share), won the evening news competition. ABC's "World News Tonight" had a higher rating (6.5, 15 share), but fewer viewers at 8.3 million. The "CBS Evening News" had 7.6 million viewers (5.7, 13).

A ratings point represents 1,022,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 102.2 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 18-24, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Tuesday), ABC, 9.8; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Thursday), ABC, 9.5; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Sunday), ABC, 8.9; "20/20" (Friday), ABC, 8.8; "48 Hours" (Monday), CBS, 8.8; "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 8.2; "Spy TV," NBC, 8.2; "Weakest Link," NBC, 7.9; "Becker," CBS, 7.7; "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.4; "Friends," NBC, 7.4.