• by March 14, 2001

(AP) - Here’s a line television executives probably never thought they’d read: CBS won the week’s ratings race on the strength of its Thursday night schedule.

The week’s two most-watched programs - “Survivor” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” - ran back-to-back that night on CBS, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.

The network has long suffered due to NBC’s dominance on Thursdays, and appeared to hit rock bottom earlier this year. But things changed instantly when CBS decided to air the second “Survivor” on Thursday.

”Survivor” had 28.7 million viewers, down three million from the week before. It was still easily the most popular show. “CSI” has blossomed into a major hit since its move from Friday, drawing 23 million viewers last week.

The only sour note for CBS is the failure of its new police drama, “Big Apple,” to catch on Thursday at 10 p.m. Fewer than half of the “CSI” audience bothered sticking around for “Big Apple,” which also finished behind an “ER” repeat in the ratings.

NBC finally may have answered the question of how low XFL football can go. Saturday’s game drew 3.67 million viewers - a modest increase from the 3.5 million a week earlier.

NBC also had a disastrous showing for the first part of its “Lost Empire” miniseries, which drew only 7.1 million viewers Sunday night. That was little more than a third of the audience size for ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and “The Practice.”

One positive for NBC: The premiere of the “Fighting Fitzgeralds” sitcom, which tied for 20th place in the week.

For the week, CBS averaged 12.2 million viewers (8.4 rating, 14 share). ABC, with four episodes of “Milionaire” in the week’s top 10, had 12.1 million viewers (8.1, 13). NBC had 9.9 million viewers (7.0, 11), Fox had 8.4 million (5.4, 9), UPN had 3.4 million (2.2, 4), the WB had 3.1 million (2.1, 3) and Pax TV had 1.5 million (1.0, 2).

In the evening news ratings race, NBC’s “Nightly News” led with 11.3 million viewers (8.3 rating, 16 share), ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 10.3 million viewers (7.8, 15) and the “CBS Evening News” had 9.4 million viewers (7.0, 13).

A rating point represents 1,022,000 households, or 1% 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 March 5-11, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings: “Survivor II,” CBS, 17.1; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 14.4; “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Wednesday), ABC, 14.0; “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Tuesday), ABC, 12.8; “The Practice,” ABC, 12.4; “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Sunday), ABC, 12.1; “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Thursday), ABC, 11.8; “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS, 11.7; “Frasier,” NBC, 11.7; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.7; “Becker,” CBS, 10.7.