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TUBE TALK With May sweeps and the 2001-02 season officially over last week, this week's Nielsen race was anticlimactic. ''Everybody Loves Raymond'' was the most-watched show (20.2 million viewers), but CBS was still edged out as the most-watched network by NBC, which averaged 10.2 million viewers to CBS' 10.1 million. ABC was third (8.1 million), followed by Fox. The real competition was at the netlets on Tuesday, with the WB's ''Gilmore Girls'' and ''Smallville'' finales battling it out with the two-hour '''' season-ender on UPN. Both slates were strong contenders, but the WB ultimately declared victory. Still, UPN beat it for the week, averaging 4.6 million to the WB's 3.9 million.
SOUND BITES '''' was officially on sale for just one day during the week ending May 26, but that was enough for it to debut on top of the Billboard chart. According to SoundScan, it sold 284,534 copies over the weekend (some stores began selling it as early as Friday). 's last album, 2000's ''The Marshall Mathers LP,'' sold 1.8 million copies its first week, but it was released, like almost all albums, on a Tuesday and racked up that total over six days, while Interscope moved the ''Eminem Show'''s release date twice at the last minute, up nine days from its initially scheduled date, in order to blunt the impact of Internet piracy and street bootlegging that had already made the record widely available.
Last week's chart-topping debut, '','' slipped to No. 2 on sales of 143,900, just over half of what it sold last week. Debuting at No. 3 was Marc Anthony's ''Mended,'' which sold 111,025 discs. Dropping two slots to No. 4, rapper Cam'ron's ''Come Home With Me'' shifted 107,775 units. Returning to the top five, up two spots, was Ashanti's self-titled CD, at No. 5 with 87,675 copies sold.
Also climbing back up two rungs was Celine Dion's ''A New Day Has Come'' (No. 6). Swapping places with ''Ashanti'' was Musiq's ''Juslisen,'' down two to No. 7. ''NOW That's What I Call Music! Vol. 9'' was No. 8, and Kenny Chesney's ''No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems'' reentered the top 10 at No. 9. Moby's ''18'' plunged six spots to No. 10. Barely missing the top 10 were two debuts, the self-titled release from Blink-182 side project Box Car Racer (No. 12), and the first rap collection from the NOW franchise, ''NOW Off the Hook'' (No. 13).
BABY TALK Is there going to be another kid in the brood on ''Malcolm in the Middle''? Maybe, since mom Jane Kaczmarek is pregnant in real life. The 46-year-old Kaczmarek and her husband, ''The West Wing'''s Bradley Whitford, have two kids, Frances 4, and George, 2. The couple issued a statement saying that ''both Bradley and Jane will be returning to work on their respective shows in the fall.'' The child is due in November.
Also due in November is a Dixie Chicklet. It'll be the first child for Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks, and her husband Charlie, who have been married since 1999.
PASSING NOTES Mildred Benson, who wrote the first 23 Nancy Drew novels and hundreds of other books, died Tuesday at 96 in a hospital in Toledo, Ohio. Starting in 1930, she wrote mysteries for the teenage sleuth under the pen name Carolyn Keene and (per the terms of her publishing contract) kept her own idendity a mystery for the next 50 years. A lifelong journalist, Benson was at her desk at the Toledo Blade newspaper on Tuesday, writing a column, just hours before she died.
