The May sweeps, one of four months when ratings are watched closely to set local advertising rates, began on Thursday. CBS's airing of the Academy of Country Music Awards finished a strong 10th for the week, but apparently viewers weren't too anxious to welcome the Ewing clan back. Fox learned that shootouts beat car chases in the ratings. The two emerging networks had identical 2.7 ratings, although the WB had a 5 share and UPN had a 4. A rating point represents 980,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 98 million TV homes.
Share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.