Five hours of last night’s primetime schedules on the big 3 were produced by the news divisions, with ABC, CBS and NBC crashing multi-hour reports on Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. But it was ABC’s Fawcett special at 10pm that was the night’s #1 show, averaging 8.2M Total Viewers.
ABC
9-10pm — “20/20” Jackson – 5.7M
10-11pm — “20/20” Fawcett – 8.2M
CBS
10-11pm — “CBS Special” Jackson (with one Fawcett piece) – 7.6M
NBC
9-11pm — “Dateline” Jackson/Fawcett – 5.8M
• At 9pm ABC and NBC tied for second place with a 1.7 rating in A18-49. (Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” led the hour with a 2.5 rating.)
• At 10pm 21.6 million Total Viewers tuned in to ABC, CBS and NBC for their news specials.
Earlier: The Big 3 Live at 10
Later: We’ll get ratings around 4pmET to determine what the Jackson/Fawcett stories meant for the cable news channels.