Viewers tune out networks’ nightly news, while CBS wins in prime time with 9 of top 10 shows

Viewers tune out networks’ nightly news

NEW YORK — The big news in TV ratings last week was how few people bothered to watch the news — the three network evening newscasts, anyway.

Logging only 4.9 million viewers, the “CBS Evening News” slipped below 5 million for the first time on record. And ABC’s “World News” had 6.4 million viewers — a drop of a half-million viewers from the week before, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Not helping matters: ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’ Katie Couric had the week off from their respective anchor desks.

Brian Williams was on duty at “NBC Nightly News,” which won the week with a three-day average of 7.8 million viewers, down a half-million from the week before. (NBC’s U.S. Open coverage led to pre-emptions Thursday and Friday.)

In prime time, a slew of popular repeats of such episodic series as “NCIS,” ”Two and a Half Men” and “The Mentalist” helped CBS win the week. That network had nine of the top 10 most-watched programs, and 16 of the top 20.

CBS averaged 7.0 million viewers (4.7 rating, 9 share). Runner-up Fox had 4.7 million (3.0 rating, 6 share), while NBC had 4.6 million (3.1 rating, 6 share) and ABC 3.7 million viewers (2.4 rating, 4 share). My Network TV had 1.3 million viewers (0.8 rating, 2 share), the CW 950,000 viewers (0.7 rating, 1 share), and ION Television 810,000 (0.5 rating, 1 share).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.3 million average audience (1.7 rating, 3 share). Telemundo had 1.1 million viewers (0.5 rating, 1 share), TeleFutura 720,000 viewers (0.4 rating, 1 share), and Azteca 170,000 viewers (0.1 rating, 0 share).

A ratings point represents 1,145,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.5 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 15-21, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “NCIS,” CBS, 10.39 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 10.19 million; “The Mentalist” (Tuesday), CBS, 10.12 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 9.72 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 8.97 million; “So You Think You Can Dance” (Wednesday), Fox, 8.48 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.42 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 8.31 million; “CSI: Miami,” 8.25 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 8.04 million.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.; CBS is owned by CBS Corp.; CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp.; Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp.; NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co.; ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks; TeleFutura is a division of Univision; Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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