For the first time in television history, a network has gone from third place to first in a single season.
CBS dethroned longtime ratings champion NBC by winning the 1991-92 season by a relatively substantial margin. CBS averaged a 13.8 rating and a 22 share, 12 percent ahead of NBC (12.3/20), 13 percent in front of ABC (12.2/20) and 66 percent in front of Fox (8.0/13).(Fox was the other big winner, however. Those numbers represent a 25 percent increase in ratings and an 18 percent increase in shares over last season.)
The Big Eye also claimed five of the top 10 shows and eight of the top 15, including No. 1 "60 Minutes."
It was CBS's first season win since the 1984-85 season. The network won 22 of 30 weeks during the regular season, including last week when the NCAA tournament title game was the most-watched show.
Even better than ranking No. 1 was the fact that CBS increased its audience by 12 percent over last season, while NBC fell 3 percent and ABC 2 percent.
"This was the greatest season-to-season percent rating increase of any network since ABC's 14 percent during the 1976-77 season," said David Poltrack, CBS's senior vice president of planning and research.
Much has been made of the boost that CBS got this season from the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the NCAA basketball tournament. And while those highly rated sports events made the gap wider, CBS would have finished first without them.
Among regular series, CBS averaged a 13.3 rating, NBC a 12.1 and ABC an 11.7.
And while CBS has long been derided because its audience "skews old" - it tends to attract older viewers, the network finished first among women 18-49, women 25-54, men 18-49 and men 25-54.
NBC, which had won the 30-week regular season for six straight seasons, was particularly classless in defeat. Instead of congratulating CBS on its victory, in an official statement, NBC announced that it "would no longer recognize mid-April as the end of the television season.
(Funny, it hasn't seemed to bother them the past six seasons. Talk about a corporate cry-baby.)
NBC will declare a winner in the middle of September, after a 52-week TV season. But it isn't going to help - CBS will still come out the winner.
THE TOP 20: 1. "60 Minutes," CBS; 2. "Roseanne," ABC; 3. "Murphy Brown," CBS; 4. "Cheers," NBC; 5. "Home Improvement," ABC; 6. "Designing Women," CBS; 7. "Coach," ABC; 8. "Full House," ABC; 9. "Murder, She Wrote," CBS; 10. "Major Dad," CBS; 11. "Monday Night Football," ABC; 12. "Unsolved Mysteries," NBC; 13. "CBS Sunday Night Movie"; 14. "Evening Shade," CBS; 15. "Northern Exposure," CBS; 16. "A Different World," NBC; 17. "The Cosby Show," NBC; 18. "Wings," NBC; 19. "20/20," ABC; 20. "America's Funniest Home Videos," ABC.