The Sounds of Aaaargh

Mike Dann at CBS was cool, Mort Werner at NBC was calm, and Leonard Goldberg at ABC was collected. The three executives, directors of programming at their respective networks, were braced for the first Nielsen ratings of the season. There was no reason for concern: their own glazed eyes could tell them that the new shows they had scheduled with great ballyhoo left some thing -- entertainment, to be exact -- to be desired.

Not that any one network fared disastrously in head-to-head competition with the others. Nielsen's first seasonal sampling of 1,100 homes last week gave NBC a minuscule overall lead with 18.4, compared with CBS's 18.1 and ABC's 17.9. More significant was the fact that out of 34 new prime-time shows, brought in this season at a cost of about $50 million, only one -- ABC's RatPa trol, a series about desert fighting in World War II -- made the top ten. The list:

Bridge on the River Kwai (movie), ABC

Green Acres, CBS

Rat Patrol, ABC

Comer Pyle--U.S.M.C., CBS, tied with Bonanza, NBC

The Andy Griffith Show, CBS

Saturday Night at the Movies, NBC

The Lucy Show, CBS

The Red Skelton Show, CBS

The Jackie Gleason Show, CBS, tied with The Beverly Hillbillies, CBS

My Three Sons, CBS

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