In the first week of the 2018-19 television season without a prime-time NFL game, “60 Minutes” was the most-watched program, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.
The episode of the CBS news magazine featuring an interview with former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz averaged 11.244 million viewers to top the ratings for the first time since the week of March 19-25.
With CBS airing a rerun of television’s most-watched entertainment program, “The Big Bang Theory,” NBC had each of the three most-watched entertainment programs, topped by “America’s Got Talent: The Champions,” which averaged 9.707 million viewers, second overall among prime-time broadcast and cable programs airing between Jan. 21 and Sunday.
“America’s Got Talent: The Champions” has been NBC’s most-watched program in each of the three weeks it has aired.
ABC’s most-watched program was the season finale of “The Conners,” seventh for the week, averaging 7.739 million viewers, its largest audience since Oct. 30.
“The Masked Singer” was Fox’s most-watched program for the second consecutive week, averaging 7.152 million viewers, a 2.9 percent increase from the 6.95-million average a week earlier.
Fox’s troubled presentation of “Rent” drew the smallest viewership of the nine live musicals since the genre returned to television in 2013, averaging 3.415 million viewers, 56th for the week.
The previous low was 4.524 million for Fox’s “A Christmas Story Live!” which aired opposite an NBC “Sunday Night Football” game on December 17, 2017.
“Rent” fared better among the young adult viewers Fox, NBC and ABC target, averaging 1.749 million viewers, the most for any program airing Sunday and 11th for the week.
CBS was the most-watched network for the second consecutive week and seventh time in the 18-week-old season, averaging 5.56 million viewers.
NBC was second, averaging 4.88 million, followed by ABC, which averaged 4.62 million, and Fox, which averaged 3.19 million for its 16 hours, 49 minutes of prime-time programming.
CBS, NBC and ABC each aired 22 hours of prime-time programming.
For the second consecutive week, the week’s most-watched cable program was the History documentary series “The Curse of Oak Island,” which averaged 3.626 million viewers, 53rd overall.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network for the second consecutive week, averaging 2.359 million viewers.
MSNBC was second, averaging 2.011 million, with the Thursday, Friday and Wednesday episodes of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” finishing second, third and fourth among the week’s cable programs.
CNN and HGTV tied for third, both averaging 1.343 million.
The most-watched Spanish-language prime-time program was the Tuesday episode of the Univision drama anthology “La Rosa de Guadalupe” which averaged 1.950 million viewers to finish 78th among broadcast programs. Its overall rank was not available.
Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network for the 13th consecutive week, averaging 1.38 million viewers. Telemundo finished second, averaging 1.16 million viewers, followed by UniMas, which averaged 370,000, Estrella TV, which averaged 270,000, and Azteca America, which averaged 80,000.
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was the most-watched network nightly newscast for the ninth consecutive week and 60th time in the past 61 weeks, averaging 9.704 million viewers.
The “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” was second, averaging 8.98 million viewers.
The “CBS Evening News” averaged 6.803 million viewers. It has finished third each week since the week of Sept. 25-29, 2006.
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were CBS’ “60 Minutes”; NBC’s “America’s Got Talent: The Champions,” “Chicago Med” and “Chicago Fire”; a rerun of CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory”; NBC’s “This Is Us”; ABC’s “The Conners”; NBC’s “Ellen’s Game of Games”; CBS’ “FBI”; and NBC’s “Chicago P.D.”