'Good' gets better
-- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/14/2000
Movies broke records across cable last week, from TBS to Lifetime to FX. On TBS, the largest of the cable nets, Jack Nicholson's schizophrenic mating dance with Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets pulled in a 6.8 rating with 5.4 million households on Sunday, Aug. 6, making it the highest rated theatrical on cable for the year. The previous winner was TBS' telecast of Pretty Woman with a 6.1/4.8.
Lifetime (at No. 11 in size) peaked with The Truth About Jane on Monday, Aug. 7. Jane scored Lifetime's highest rating yet this summer for an original cable movie with a 4.7/3.6. Lifetime's movies are regularly among the highest rated programs on cable, but Jane's rating was a 52% increase over the year-to-date average and also the largest audience for any Lifetime original movie in the last five years.
FX fared well with Deliberate Intent, its first-ever original film. Intent aired Sunday, Aug. 6, to an average of 2.4/1.3, the highest yet for any original program for the 6-year-old Fox-owned network.
