USA Extends Primetime Ratings Streak To 11

Plenty Of Network Movement Among Rest Of Top 10

-- Multichannel News, 3/19/2008 2:14:00 PM

USA Network was in its familiar first-place household ratings perch in primetime last week, but there was a bit of shifting among the rest of cable’s top 10.

USA once again set the pace with a 2.2 household average from March 10 through March 16, according to a Disney ABC Cable Networks Groups analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. The WWE Monday Night Raw franchise held the top two spots for the week, garnering 5.69 million viewers in the 10 p.m. hour on March 10 and 5.54 million in the prior hour, helping the “characters” network score an 11^th consecutive win in the daypart.

Disney Channel, which was tied for second the week of March 3 through March 10 with TNT, placed all by itself last week, averaging a 1.9 mark, 0.3 points ahead of the “drama” network and Fox News Channel. The week before the cable news leader was tied with TBS the week with a 1.5 mark, which the “very funny” matched in the March 10 through March 16 span, to finish fifth.

Nick at Nite held sixth all by itself last week with a 1.4. ESPN, which had zoomed into a tie with NAN the prior week behind its most-watched college basketball game ever, dropped back to a hold a share of 10^th at a 1.1, along with Spike TV and A&E Network.

In between, Lifetime Television vaulted from a share of 10^th in March’s second week into seventh the last go-round, aided by the 3.4 million watchers for the March 15 premiere of original mafia-themed telefilm Wisegal.

The History Channel was eighth again, again averaging a 1.2 rating.

Hallmark (eighth to12^th), TruTV  (10^th to 12^th)  and CNN (10^th to 18th) all slipped back.