The shift from NBC to the Reelz cable network resulted in a sharp viewership drop for the Miss USA pageant, but it was still the week’s seventh most-tweeted-about prime-time entertainment program.
Sunday’s pageant averaged 925,000 viewers, placing it 1,297th among the programs airing on cable television, including those not airing in prime-time, and behind 155 prime-time programs airing on the 15 commercial broadcast networks shown between July 6 and Sunday.
The audience was the second-largest in the nearly nine-year history of Reelz, trailing only the 2011 premiere of the miniseries “The Kennedys,” which had been dropped by the History channel.
When the pageant aired on NBC in 2014, it averaged 5.56 million viewers, airing opposite Game 2 of the NBA Finals and the Tony Awards, putting it 22nd for the week.
NBC dropped coverage of the pageant due to remarks made by Miss Universe Organization owner Donald Trump about Mexican immigrants when he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on June 16.
“We were never going to do what NBC was going to do,” Reelz CEO Stan E. Hubbard told City News Service. “I think what we pulled together with the Miss USA team was remarkable.”
Reelz reaches about 70 million households, while NBC is seen in essentially all of the nation’s 116.4 million households with televisions.
Reelz reached agreement with the Miss Universe Organization July 1 to air the pageant, which included hiring new hosts.
The pageant was the subject of 70,000 tweets between three hours before it aired and three hours after it ended, according to Nielsen data. The VH-1 alternative series “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” was the week’s most-tweeted about prime-time entertainment program with 221,000 tweets.
The Tuesday edition of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” was the most- watched prime-time television program last week, averaging 10.57 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released today by Nielsen.
ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud” was the week’s only other program program to attract more than 8 million eyeballs, averaging 8.72 million viewers to finish second.
CBS had three of the five most-viewed programs and 11 of the top 16 to be the most-watched network for the second time in three weeks. Its most- watched program was “Zoo,” third for the week, averaging 7.67 million viewers, retaining 93.8 percent of the audience from its premiere a week earlier.
NBC was second, averaging 4.61 million viewers, followed by ABC (4.16 million).
A week after finishing first in the prime-time ratings thanks to its record-setting coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup final, Fox averaged 2.48 million viewers to finish fourth among the English-language networks and fifth overall, trailing the Spanish-language Univision network (2.49 million).
“Shark Week” programming made Discovery Channel the week’s most- watched cable site, averaging 2.35 million viewers.
The most-watched “Shark Week” program was “Super Predator,” which averaged 3.36 million viewers, sixth among prime-time cable programs and 56th among all prime-time programs.
For the second consecutive week, the TNT crime dramas “Rizzoli & Isles” and “Major Crimes” were the week’s most-watched cable programs, but their order was reversed this week. “Rizzoli & Isles” was first among cable programs, averaging 4.42 million viewers, 28th overall, and “Major Crimes was second, averaging 4.02 million, 38th overall.
The week’s most-watched Spanish-language prime-time program was Univision’s coverage of the Mexico-Guatemala CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer game, which averaged 3.75 million viewers, putting it 43rd among all broadcast and cable programs.
As usual, Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network, averaging 2.49 million viewers. Telemundo was second, averaging 1.38 million, followed by UniMas (1.13 million), MundoFox (180,000), Estrella TV (150,000) and Azteca America (70,000).
The “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” was the most-watched network nightly newscast for the third consecutive week, averaging 8.14 million viewers, followed by ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” (7.5 million) and the “CBS Evening News” anchored by Scott Pelley (6.68 million).
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud”; CBS’ “Zoo,” “NCIS” and “60 Minutes”; ABC’s “The Bachelorette”; CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory”; NBC’s Wednesday hourlong rerun of “America’s Got Talent” and “American Ninja Warrior”; and CBS’ “NCIS: New Orleans.”
— Wire Reports