• by Ken Liebeskind , July 17, 2002

The baseball all-star game, the most popular all-star game of all major sports, turned out to be a winner for Fox last week. The game scored a 16 share/5.4 household with 14.6 million viewers and the pre-game show scored nearly as high, giving the network the first and third ranked shows for the week. That's quite a boon for the network which seldom gets the gold.

The game, plus American Idol, which ranked fourteenth, helped Fox close in on CBS and NBC for top prime average. CBS led with a 10 share/5.4 household, followed by NBC 10/5.2 and Fox 9/4.7. ABC trailed at 8/4.1.

NBC's new game show Dog Eat Dog ranked tenth. The rest of the top 10 were mostly reruns of hit shows, including CSI (CBS), ranked second, Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS), fourth and Law and Order (NBC), fifth. The ABC Monday Night Movie was sixth, 60 Minutes (CBS) seventh, 48 Hours Monday (CBS), eighth, and Becker (CBS), ninth. ABC's new comedy My Wife and Kids, ranked 25th.

Cable leaders for the most recent week were WWE Entertainment (TNN), Austin Power Spy Shagged (TBS) and Spongebob (NICK), which won six of the top ten spots. WWE scored a 3.1 household with 3.2 million households viewing.

Syndicated leaders for the most recent week were Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Friends, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond, with Wheel scoring a 7.5 household with 7.9 million households tuned in.

Fox led the way in sports for the most recent week (7/1-7/7), with the Pepsi 400 ranked first and Saturday baseball third. Pepsi 400 scored a 12 share/5.2 household with 5.5 million households watching. NBC took the rest of the top sports slots with Wimbledon Tennis ranked second and fourth and the US Womens Open golf fifth.