CNN topped all the competition in viewership for coverage of the Democratic National Convention, including having each of last week’s five most-watched prime-time cable programs, according to live-plus-same- day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday.
NBC combined the third consecutive 1-2 finish by “America’s Got Talent” with the most-watched convention coverage among the broadcast networks to finish first for the fifth consecutive week.
NBC’s five-week winning streak is its longest since its seven-week streak from April 29-June 10, 2002, outside of when it aired the Olympics.
NBC averaged 4.67 million viewers for its prime-time programming between July 25 and Sunday. CBS was second, averaging 4.25 million, followed by ABC, which averaged 3.98 million.
Fox averaged 1.86 million viewers, finishing fourth among the broadcast networks for the 16th consecutive week and seventh overall, trailing CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
NBC, CBS and ABC all broadcast 22 hours of programming for ratings purposes last week, while Fox broadcast 15 hours, 2 minutes.
CNN was the week’s most-watched cable network, averaging 3.21 million viewers. Fox News Channel averaged 2.5 million viewers to finish second after being the most-watched cable network for seven consecutive weeks. MSNBC was third, averaging 2.38 million.
CNN’s convention coverage was topped by the final prime-time hour of Thursday’s session, which featured the acceptance speech by presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which averaged 7.78 million viewers, the week’s fourth most-watched program.
The Tuesday episode of “America’s Got Talent” was the week’s most- watched program, averaging 10.47 million viewers, while the Wednesday episode was second, averaging 9.52 million.
An “America’s Got Talent” episode has been the most-watched prime-time program for six consecutive weeks and the most-watched entertainment program all nine weeks it has aired this summer.
The week’s only other program to average more than 8 million viewers was the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” which averaged 8.21 million viewers, finishing third.
“Celebrity Family Feud” was ABC’s most-watched program for the fourth consecutive week, averaging 7.3 million viewers to finish fifth for the week.
Fox’s most-watched program was “MasterChef,” 65th among the week’s prime-time broadcast and cable programs, averaging 3.39 million viewers.
The week’s most-watched Spanish-language program was the Monday episode of the Univision telenovela “Por Siempre Joan Sebastian” which averaged 2.4 million viewers, tied for 109th overall.
As usual, Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network, averaging 1.71 million viewers. Telemundo was second, averaging 1.45 million, followed by UniMas, which averaged 560,000, Estrella TV, which averaged 180,000, Azteca America, which averaged 90,000, and MundoMax, which averaged 70,000.
The “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,” was the most-watched network nightly newscast for the third consecutive week, averaging 7.177 million viewers. ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was second, averaging 7.147 million.
The “CBS Evening News” was third, as it has been throughout Scott Pelley’s more than five years as anchor, averaging 6.03 million viewers.
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; CBS’ “60 Minutes”; CNN’s coverage of the 10-11 p.m. Thursday segment of the Democratic National Convention; ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud”; CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory”; ABC’s “The $100,000 Pyramid” and “The Bachelorette”; CNN’s coverage of the 10-11 p.m. Monday segment of the Democratic National Convention and CNN’s coverage of the 10-11 p.m. Tuesday segment of the Democratic National Convention.
–City News Service