TUBE NEWS CBS handily won the Nielsen ratings race this week, with Sunday's ''9/11'' documentary far and away the week's most-watched show, drawing 39 million viewers. The network also had the No. 2 show, the ever more popular ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,'' whose 26.7 million viewers eclipsed Thursday night NBC rivals ''Friends'' and ''ER.'' Add strong showings for '''' and ''Everybody Loves Raymond,'' and you have a week with an average of 14.5 million viewers, outdistancing second-place NBC's 12.3 million. Fox, boosted by Sunday's premiere of the new ''Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones'' trailer, was third, averaging 7.7 million viewers to edge out ABC (7.68 million). UPN was fifth (3.6 million), followed by the WB (3.3 million).
HEALTH WATCH Laryngitis has sidelined Billy Joel, who was forced to postpone Monday night's St. Petersburg, Fla., date on his ''Face to Face'' tour with fellow piano man Elton John. This after Joel sang throughout Saturday's three-hour show against the advice of doctors. No word on when the scrapped show will be rescheduled, or whether Joel will be ready when the tour is scheduled to resume Friday at New York's Madison Square Garden.
LEGAL BRIEFS James Gandolfini is about to be a solo Soprano. He's filed for divorce from his wife, Marcy, a former publicist he married in 1999. The actor's spokesman gave no reason for the split. The couple have a 2-year-old son, Michael....
Turns out the most fearsome film reviewer in Hollywood hasn't been Roger Ebert or Harry Knowles but David Manning. His reviews garnered Sony Pictures reams of bad publicity, caused the monthlong suspension of two Sony ad execs, and now have cost the studio $326,000 in a lawsuit settlement with the state of Connecticut. And he's not even real. Connecticut is the home of the Ridgefield Press, the small newspaper for which the fictional Manning supposedly wrote glowing reviews for such mediocre Sony movies as ''Hollow Man,'' ''Vertical Limit,'' ''A Knight's Tale,'' and ''The Animal,'' which Sony quoted in newspaper ads. When Newsweek revealed last summer that Manning was a Sony marketing creation, it launched a probe that resulted in the fraud lawsuit that ended in yesterday's settlement. In addition to the money Sony ponied up, the studio agreed to stop making up phony reviews and to quit making TV commercials in which Sony shills pose as civilian moviegoers offering testimonials. It's not clear what the state will do with the payout. Maybe it could be used to reimburse every Connecticut moviegoer duped into buying a ticket for the movies Manning praised; given the middling box office for those movies, there can't be that many dissatisfied customers.
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