Sunday night, when the first two hours of the six-hour miniseries aired, audiences opted to stay faithful to the familiar spookiness of Fox's The X-Files or turned to CBS's feel-good movie A Match Made In Heaven, starring veteran Oscar-winning actress, Olympia Dukakis. However, the horror-genre tale did rebound somewhat Monday night, up from a 17 percent to a 19 percent share of the TV audience, in the early estimates. That won its time periods, but the competition on the other networks was weak
ABC thought this new take on Stephen King's best-selling novel had two things going for it: King's name--a winner for ABC in the past with miniseries such as The Tommyknockers--and the curiosity of those who had previously seen Stanley Kubrick's notorious movie version, starring Jack Nicholson.
"Shock" was the word around ABC after the Sunday ratings came in, although faces were reported to be looking "a little happier" after Monday's showing.
With the central roles acted this time by Steven Weber, best known as a star of NBC's sitcom Wings, and film actress Rebecca De Mornay, the story focused more on the psychological trauma of a man trying to stay sober. Perhaps audiences wanted a more straightforward fright.
The weak numbers for The Shining put ABC in fourth place behind CBS, Fox and NBC for overall Sunday night ratings, and, with even more dismal figures showing up for its Saturday night schedule, it is certain the network will come in behind both NBC and CBS in household ratings for the entire sweeps period which runs until May 21st.
On the bright side, Ellen DeGeneres' discussion of her own lesbianism on Friday night's newsmagazine 20/20 brought strong ratings, which the network hopes will carry over to Wednesday's episode of her sitcom, when its her character's turn to come out. But The Shining's final installment isn't likely to beat NBC's always-hot Thursday night. So that leaves ABC execs mumbling to themselves Forrest Gump's old mantra "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get"--and hoping their broadcast of his movie on May 4 pulls some decent numbers.