With NBC airing a rerun of “America’s Got Talent,” the most-watched prime-time program in each of the first six full weeks of television’s summer season, a broadcast of the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” finished first last week.
“60 Minutes” averaged 7.05 million viewers, one of three prime-time programs to average more than 5 million viewers between July 6 and Sunday, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday.
The others were a rerun of the CBS action drama “NCIS,” which averaged 5.527 million viewers, and ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud,” which averaged 5.126 million viewers for a matchup between five members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and five of the NFL’s rising young stars.
The premiere of CBS’ competition series “Tough As Nails” was 13th for the week and second in its 8-10 p.m. time slot behind Fox News Channel’s political talk shows “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity,” averaging 4.096 million viewers.
CBS had three of the week’s top four programs to finish first in the network race for the 19th time in 24 weeks and 24th in the 42-week-old 2019-20 season, averaging 3.42 million viewers.
Fox News Channel averaged 3.198 million viewers to finish second for the second consecutive week after back-to-back victories. “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” accounted for four of the week’s Top 10 programs.
ABC was third, averaging 2.71 million, followed by NBC, which averaged 2.66 million. Its most-watched program was the “America’s Got Talent” rerun, sixth for the week, averaging 4.393 million.
Fox was fifth among the broadcast networks — trailing Spanish-language broadcaster Univision — and ninth overall, averaging 1.3 million viewers for its 15 hours, 51 minutes of prime-time programming. Its most-watched program was a rerun of the procedural drama “9-1-1: Lone Star,” 69th for the week, averaging 2.48 million viewers.
CBS, Fox News Channel, ABC, NBC and Univision each aired 22 hours of prime-time programming.
The combined four-network viewership was down 19.2 percent from the corresponding week one year ago which included Fox’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, which averaged a prime-time record low of 8.153 million viewers, but still second for the week of July 8-14, 2019.
Fox viewership was down 57.9% for the week, NBC’s 25.7% and ABC’s 16.4%. CBS’s was up 12.9%. Its programming in the corresponding week in 2019 included the first four episodes of the dating series “Love Island,” which averaged between 1.974 million and 2.615 million viewers, ranking between 50th and 86th for the week.
“Love Island’s” viewership would grow and earn an order for a second season.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network for the 25th consecutive week. MSNBC was second among cable networks for the fifth consecutive week, averaging 2.134 million viewers. CNN was third for the fifth consecutive week, averaging 1.456 million.
An episode of the Univision telenovela “Amor eterno” was the most-watched Spanish-language prime-time program for the 15th consecutive week, with the Thursday episode averaging 2.118 million viewers, 49th among broadcast programs. Its overall rank was not available.
Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network for the 32nd consecutive week and 34th time in 35 weeks, averaging 1.5 million viewers.
Telemundo was second, averaging 810,000 viewers, followed by UniMas (400,000), Estrella TV (140,000) and Azteca America (40,000).
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was the most-watched network nightly newscast for the 32nd consecutive week, the 83rd time in 84 weeks and the 135th time in 137 weeks, averaging 8.965 million viewers.
“NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” was second, averaging 7.595 million viewers, followed by the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell,” which averaged 5.335 million viewers.
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were CBS’ “60 Minutes”; a rerun of CBS’ “NCIS”; ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud”; a rerun of CBS’ “FBI”; the Thursday broadcast of “Hannity” on Fox News Channel; a rerun of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; the July 6 and July 8 broadcasts of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News Channel; a rerun of ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos”; and the July 6 broadcast of “Hannity.”
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