• by August 22, 2001

(AP) - With four editions of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" beating out four showings of "Everybody Loves Raymond," ABC narrowly edged CBS for last week's ratings crown.

The Tuesday, Sunday and Thursday editions of the ABC game show were the three most-watched programs in prime time last week, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.

CBS ran four reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" in succession last Monday, and all finished among Nielsen's top 21.

ABC's variety show, "The Wayne Brady Show," and CBS' "Big Brother" continued to do modestly well among the fresh summer programming. NBC's "The Downer Channel" and Fox's "Murder in Small Town X" have done poorly.

For the week, ABC averaged 7.8 million viewers (5.5 rating, 10 share), CBS averaged 7.7 million (also 5.5, 10), NBC had 7.3 million (5.4, 10), Fox had 5.4 million (3.7, 7), UPN had 3.2 million (2.0, 4), the WB had 2.8 million (1.9, 3) and Pax TV had 1.3 million (0.9, 2).

ABC's "World News Tonight" won the battle of the network news subs last week with 6.8 million viewers (6.5 rating, 15 share), beating NBC's "Nightly News" with 6.3 million viewers (6.2, 14) and the "CBS Evening News" with 5.8 million (5.7, 12). Charles Gibson was the substitute host on ABC, Brian Williams on NBC and Bob Schieffer on CBS.

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 Aug. 13-19, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Tuesday), ABC, 9.5; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Sunday), ABC, 9.1; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Thursday), ABC, 8.7; "Law & Order," NBC, 8.6; "20/20" (Friday), ABC, 8.0; "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.8; "Everybody Loves Raymond" (9:30 p.m.), CBS, 7.7; "Primetime Thursday," ABC, 7.7; "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 7.6; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 7.4.