Daytime stars fare poorly in visit to prime-time for awards show

NEW YORK - Judging by the ratings, daytime's biggest stars may want to think twice about venturing into prime time.

The Daytime Emmy awards show, on ABC last Friday, was seen by 6.1 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. That ranked it No. 70 among primetime shows last week, behind such entries as reruns of Wife Swap and The King of Queens.

That's down from 7.6 million viewers last year, and less than half what the audience was in 2000. The awards show's peak audience of just under 22 million people came in 1993, when people were still wondering whether Susan Lucci would ever win.

It's a distressing sign for organizers, who tried to pump up the entertainment value this year by moving the show to Los Angeles for the first time and opening with a performance by Rick Springfield. ABC also lengthened the show to three hours and moved it up from its usual mid-May broadcast.

CBS and Fox again dominated as the May ratings sweep began; the two networks had 22 of the 30 most-watched prime-time programs last week. Fox's House is particularly on a roll, scoring its biggest audience ever with 24.5 million viewers.

CBS averaged 13.1 million viewers (8.6 rating, 14 share), while Fox had 10.3 million (6.3, 10), and won among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers sought by advertisers for the 10th straight week. NBC had 8.9 million (5.9, 10), ABC 8.2 million (5.4, 9), the WB 3 million (2.0, 3), UPN 2.9 million (1.9, 3) and Pax TV 450,000 (0.3, 1).

NBC's Nightly News dominated the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.6 million viewers (6.1, 13). ABC's World News Tonight had 7.5 million viewers (5.3, 11) and the CBS Evening News had 7 million (5.0, 10). AP