Competitions and CBS reruns dominate prime-time TV in Nielsen ratings

Competitions and CBS reruns rule prime-time TV

NEW YORK — Competitions and CBS reruns ruled prime-time television.

Each of Nielsen Media Research’s 11 most watched broadcast shows last week fell into one of those two categories, led by NBC’s hit airing of “America’s Got Talent” in three separate hours.

Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” also hit the top 15 with two separate editions and ABC’s “The Bachelorette” reached the top 10 as she neared a crucial decision. Six CBS reruns landed in the top 11, led by “NCIS.”

CBS averaged 6.2 million viewers in prime-time for the week (4.1 rating, 8 share). NBC had 5.1 million (3.3, 6), Fox 5 million (3.1, 6), ABC 4 million (2.6, 5), My Network TV 1.4 million (0.9, 2), the CW 860,000 (0.6, 1) and ION Television 410,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3 million viewer average (1.6 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million and TeleFutura 950,000 (both 0.5, 1) and Azteca 170,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.6 million viewers (5.1, 11). ABC’s “World News” was second with 6.8 million (4.6, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.5 million viewers (3.8, 8).

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 July 20-26, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), NBC, 13.75 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 11.26 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 9.72 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 9.61 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 9.31 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.8 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 8.52 million; “So You Think You Can Dance” (Thursday), Fox, 8.42 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 8.27 million; “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 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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