Beginning April 24, the TV networks will fall over themselves trying to astonish you. Colin Powell will introduce Touched by an Angel .
Local stations use the ratings from the four annual sweeps months to set advertising rates.
The May '97 round may be the most competitive yet, as the networks battle for their shrinking share of the television audience. In response to network pressure, Nielsen is now studying different ways to measure local audiences. So God commanded the serpent, purveyor of the apple, in the Garden of Eden. Scientists long had their own reasons for suspecting that snakes once had legs, but they were unable to find a specimen, living or extinct, with well-formed limbs. The fossil, Pachyrhachis problematicus , was actually unearthed in a limestone quarry in Israel two decades ago and described as a lizard.