Syndie Sweep Numbers Show Year-to-year Woes

The verdict was in Thursday for a posse of syndicated weekly fare as the national numbers for the final weekend in the November sweep were released. And it was not good news.

The weekly syndicated rankings for the week ending Nov. 25 indicate that while most of the top weekly hours gained ground in the final week of the sweep, the advance was not enough to stave off year-to-year declines. Next week's chart will include the final numbers for all Monday-Friday programming.

The top rookie weekly hours in the sweep were "Mutant X" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "Mutant X" averaged a 3.0 rating for the sweep period, and "Buffy" was second with a 2.8 sweep average. In third place among the rookie weeklies was "The Practice" (2.7), followed by "World's Wildest Police Videos" (2.3), "The Bravest" (1.3) and "Tracker" (1.1). The new rookie half-hour weekly "Hot Ticket" (1.6) gained 17% in the final week of the sweep.

Among returning hour weeklies, "Entertainment Tonight Weekend" (3.5) led for the second consecutive year but was down 13% year-to-year. In second place, "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" (3.1) was down 21%, "Stargate SG-1" (2.9) was down 9%, "The X-Files" (2.8) was down 28%, "ER" (2.5) was down 14%, "Beastmaster" (2.2) was unchanged-year to-year, and "VIP" 2.1 was down 19%.

"Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict" (2.0) was down 13% year-to-year, "Extra Weekend" (2.0) was down 9%, and "Maximum Exposure" (2.0) also was down 9%.