Leo lays an egg in his first news special

NEW YORK (AP) -- Leonardo DiCaprio's fans may like him running for his life aboard the sinking "Titanic," but they weren't interested in watching him interview President Clinton. <br><br>TV viewers

Tuesday, April 25th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) -- Leonardo DiCaprio's fans may like him running for his life aboard the sinking "Titanic," but they weren't interested in watching him interview President Clinton.

TV viewers responded with a collective shrug of the shoulders to "Planet Earth 2000," ABC's Saturday news special on global warming that caused a hubbub for its use of the actor in a role usually reserved for journalists.

The special drew 3.9 million viewers, a smaller audience than any other prime-time show last week on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox, except for Fox's airing of the movie, "The Full Monty."

DiCaprio's audience was about one-seventh what Regis Philbin drew Sunday in the week's most-watched show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Saturday's dramatic government raid in the Elian Gonzalez case boosted the ratings for CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. The three cable news networks had an average audience of nearly 2.6 million that day, up from their average of 661,000 for the first three months of the year. CNN, with 1.4 million viewers, easily led its rivals.

Former Supreme Mary Wilson won her television face-off with ex-bandmate Diana Ross. Wilson's ABC interview on "20/20" drew 14 million viewers on Thursday night. Ross was asked to answer the next night on "20/20," but her interview had only 10.7 million viewers.

ABC won Nielsen Media Research's prime-time ratings race for the 17th week in a row, with an average audience of 12.1 million (8.1 rating, 14 share).

Heading into the May ratings "sweeps," the real race in the season standings is for second place behind ABC.

CBS, last season's champ, will try to protect its narrow lead with specials like the "Jesus" miniseries, a Judds musicalreunion, a movie with the "Dukes of Hazzard" crew and the series-ending "Cosby."

NBC, only one-tenth of a ratings point behind CBS, will counter with "The '70s" and "Jason and the Argonauts" miniseries, a "Growing Up Brady" movie and episodes of "Friends" with Bruce Willis and Tom Selleck.

CBS had an average of 10.7 million viewers last week (7.4 rating, 13 share), and NBC was at 10.1 million (7.3, 13). Fox had 7.4 million (4.9, 9), UPN had 4.1 million (2.7, 5), the WB had 2.7 million (2.1, 4) and Pax TV had 1.2 million (0.9, 2).

ABC's "World News Tonight" drew 9.7 million viewers last week (7.1 rating, 16 share). NBC's "Nightly News" had 9.5 million viewers (7.2, 16) and the "CBS Evening News" had 6.1 million viewers (6.1, 13).

A rating point represents 1,008,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 100.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of April 17-23, the top 10 shows, their networks and ratings were: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Tuesday), ABC, 17.0; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Thursday), ABC, 16.8; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (Sunday), ABC, 16.7; "The Practice," ABC, 11.7; "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 11.3; "NYPD Blue," ABC,10.4; "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.3; "ER," NBC, 10.1; "20/20Downtown," ABC, 10.1; "Becker," CBS, 9.9; "Dharma & Greg," ABC, 9.9; "Law and Order," NBC, 9.9; Touched By an Angel, CBS, 9.9.

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