Syndie Insider

King World's The Oprah Winfrey Show scored big ratings Tuesday with Winfrey's interview with former President Bill Clinton, who is promoting his autobiography, My Life. The show gave Oprah its second-highest overnight rating of the season, with a 9.5 rating/22 share in the weighted metered markets. Only Oprah's 50th-birthday bash achieved higher ratings for the show this year. Clinton is hitting the publicity circuit hard to promote his 972-page tome, getting huge ratings for 60 Minutes on Sunday night and selling out bookstores across the country.

DIC Entertainment has signed a deal with Telemunchen to serve as the exclusive sales, licensing and merchandising representative across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Under terms of the three-year deal, Telemunchen will handle TV, video and theatrical sales for all of DIC's kids programming, including the newly acquired Trollz, as well as Stan Lee's Phantom 5, Archie's Weird Mysteries, Evolution, Mary-Kate & Ashley, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros.

The extensively covered death and funeral services of former President Ronald Reagan spelled lower ratings for most syndicated programs in the week ended June 13. Although Nielsen helped shows by excluding several days from their ratings averages, many lost ground from the prior week.

The top off-net sitcoms were hit especially hard, with all of the top three registering season lows. Sony's Seinfeld slid 14% to 5.0, Warner Bros.' Friends fell 8% to 4.7, and King World's Everybody Loves Raymond eased 8% to 4.6. Compared with last year at this time, Seinfeld was down 21%, Friends was off 22%, and Raymond was behind by 18%.

King World's Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy hit season lows for the second week in a row.