Year of the Photo Finish

For the first time in the history of TV's Nielsen ratings, the three major networks last week ended up in as close a thing to a photofinish as statistics are likely to produce: a dead heat between CBS and NBC, each scoring an identical 19.4%* and, only a whisker behind long-lagging ABC with 19.3%.

Sitting there basking was ABC Network President Tom Moore, who says expansively: "None of it was really a surprise, only a confirmation." ABC's shows are apparently more dynamically mediocre than CBS's, for it is obviously out of CBS that ABC has taken its great equalizing bite (see chart). ABC, at any rate, has fresher and less mechanical situation comedies than CBS and with its two Peyton Place programs it has proved to all television that audiences at night like sex and soap as much as audiences do in the daytime.

Score or Drop Out. CBS still has six of the top ten shows, so its loss is not entirely without honor; but where the profits show, in the overall sampling of the total mass of people who watch a given network during a given minute, CBS has lost millions of fans. CBS-TV President James T. Aubrey Jr. has built his success on cold formula: quality be damned, programs either score high ratings or drop out. It would follow that the same criterion might apply to a TV president who lives by such a formula, and rumors are all over the industry that Aubrey's own rating is down--but not enough to be out.

There are 91 regularly scheduled shows in prime time. The top program this season is NBC's Bonanza, which has long since outshot all competition to become TV's preeminent Western.

On the air five years, Bonanza stars Lome Greene as a late 19th century Nevada rancher who talks softly and with psychiatric insight while combating, say, a half-breed horse thief, who was the heavy in this week's show. The dialogue uses pithy aphorisms ("When you are only half of something, you are really half of nothing"), which eventually works its way toward a modern message: "Never feel guilty about having warm human feelings toward anyone." The episodes are surprisefully plotted and seek variety in the bizarre: next week a knight in armor rides out the purple sage and rams his lance through a stagecoach door.

Over and Over. The second-highest-rated show is ABC's Bewitched, in which Elizabeth Montgomery (TIME, Oct. 30) goes on "twitching her nose into other people's business," as the dialogue put it last week, reassembling broken vases, halting rainstorms, and engineering marriages through her special talents as an authentic but broom-less witch. If the ratings are correct some 32 million people watch this show each week, in which the same sort of thing happens over and over again-- something breaks, the girl's nose twitches, the film is run backwards, the broken object is whole again, tune in again next week, same time, same staple.

CBS's Comer Pyle, or Simple Simon, U.S.M.C., has scored third highest in the ratings. Like Bewitched, Corner is a new show this year, and it is unusual for two out of the top three programs to be new ones. But it is not unusual to have an apple of Appalachia like Marine Private Corner Pyle, played by Jim Nabors, as a high-rated hero. CBS's Beverly Hillbillies has a whole basketful, and last year was No. 1 for the second year running. This year it has dropped to 17, and ABC's Moore, who sees programming as a "chess game," thinks, "CBS made a tactical error." Last year it was preceded by Suspense, a program aimed at riveting its viewers to one station; this year Hillbillies is preceded by CBS Reports, fourth from the bottom in ratings.

Sump Pit. The balance of the top ten includes, in order, The Fugitive (ABC), The Andy Griffith Show (CBS) The Red Skelton Hour (CBS) The Munsters (CBS), The Lucy Show (CBS), The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS) and--No. 10--Peyton Place II (ABC)' The bottom ten shows, naturally enough, include in the sump pit nearly all those that an educated viewer would turn to--CBS's World War I, which holds absolute last place, The Bell Telephone Hour, CBS Reports, and Slattery's People, which is one of the few faintly commendable dramatic shows on the air.

This may be Jack Benny's last year. From No. 16 a year ago, he has declined to No. 62. Jack Paar--No. 50 to No. 71--is doing worse than Benny Joey Bishop--37, now 89--is doing worse than Paar. Allen Flint's Candid Camera, No. 13 a year ago, is now No. 34. Into gaps left by dropped shows,-NBC will put a popular-music show called Hullaballoo and an imitation Fugitive called Branded, set in the 1880s and starring Chuck Conners as a discredited West Pointer. CBS is doing some elaborate switching, trying out a dozen shows in one another's time slots to see if audiences will respond. The most notable change involves CBS Reports, which was on the air during the children's hour. Wednesday at 7:30 E.S.T., and has been moved to Monday at the adult hour of 10.

ABC's Peyton Place situation indicates, finally, how little the intrinsic merit of a program has to do with its rating. Peyton Place is broadcast twice a week--the first program ever to provide such a test for the meaning of ratings--and, as continuing nighttime soap opera, both parts are essentially the same. Yet Peyton Place II--Thursday 9:30 p.m. E.S.T.--is No. 10 on the air and Peyton Place--Tuesday. 9:30 p.m. E.S.T.--is No. 30. Clearly, the time slot a show occupies has as much to do with ratings as any other factor Television, moreover, has become so flavorless and homogeneous that many people obviously turn it on only to kill time; the viewer's schedule of other activities influences ratings too. What is regularly on the air can be far less vital than when the set owner happens to be watching.

* Of TV homes with their sets tuned in during an average minute.

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