‘Big Brother’ on CBS has unusual growth for old series

CBS’ ‘Big Brother’ gaining in viewers

NEW YORK — CBS is nearing summer’s end as the only major broadcaster with more viewers than last summer, helped in part by a revived “Big Brother” franchise.

Three separate prime-time “Big Brother” episodes were among Nielsen Media Research’s 25 most-watched programs last week. The series that throws a group of strangers together in a house and films their every move is in its 11th edition, and viewership is up 7 percent from last year.

That defies traditional TV gravity; it’s rare that a long-running program would show growth. The series mined the latest reality TV star known more for bad behavior than anything else: Chima Simone was kicked off for disobeying producers’ orders to put on a microphone, then throwing the microphone in a spa. She also apologized for calling a cast member of Lebanese descent a terrorist.

CBS viewership is up 5 percent over last summer, Nielsen said.

NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” topped the ratings last week, for both its Tuesday and Wednesday editions. ABC, which has generally had a wipeout of a summer, had a stronger week than usual with a country music special and Saturday night college football game.

For the week, CBS averaged 5.9 million viewers (3.9 rating, 7 share), NBC had 5.7 million (3.7, 77), ABC had 4.7 million (2.9, 5), Fox had 3.8 million (2.4, 4), My Network TV had 1.4 million (0.9, 2), the CW had 990,000 (0.7, 1) and ION Television had 620,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.2 million average (1.7 rating, 3 share), TeleFutura had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million (both 0.5, 1) and Azteca had 160,000 (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,” on the week anchor Charles Gibson announced his retirement, was second with 7.2 million (4.8, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.4 million viewers (3.7, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Aug. 31-Sept. 6, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 12.81 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 12.39 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 10.1 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 8.46 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.34 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 7.89 million; “Big Brother 11″ (Tuesday), CBS, 7.79 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 7.73 million; “Hell’s Kitchen,” Fox, 7.63 million; “Wipeout,” ABC, 7.62 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.

On the Net:

www.nielsenmedia.com