‘Talent’ drives NBC to the top
The show has its biggest audience this season. ‘Game of Thrones’ is second.
The unscripted competition “America’s Got Talent” on NBC drew its largest audience of the season, averaging more viewers than any of its episodes since 2011, other than season finales and final performance episodes.
The July 25 “America’s Got Talent” episode averaged 13.08 million viewers, more than the combined viewership of the programming on ABC, CBS, Fox and the CW running opposite it.
“America’s Got Talent” was the only prime-time program airing between July 24 and Sunday to average more than 10 million viewers and the only broadcast program to average more than 7 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.
Each of the last five firstrun episodes has been the most-watched program of its week. An original “America’s Got Talent” episode has been the most-watched entertainment program in each of the eight weeks of television’s 2017 summer season that one has aired.
The third episode of the seventh season of the HBO fantasy drama “Game of Thrones” was second for the week, and was the mostwatched cable program, averaging 9.25 million viewers.
The audience was the third largest in the series’ history, behind the season premiere, which averaged 10.11 million, and the season’s second episode, which averaged 9.27 million.
“Game of Thrones” was the week’s most-watched program among viewers ages 18-49, averaging 5.52 million viewers among the group targeted by ABC, Fox, NBC and many cable networks and coveted by advertisers.
“America’s Got Talent” was second among the group, averaging 3.39 million, followed by the Thursday, Sunday and Wednesday episodes of CBS’ “Big Brother,” which averaged 2.46 million, 2.42 million and 2.32 million.
NBC’s supernatural thriller “Midnight, Texas,” was the most-watched of the week’s two series premieres, averaging 3.57 million viewers, finishing first in its 10-11 p.m. time slot July 24, and 32nd for the week.
The premiere of ABC’s suspense thriller “Somewhere Between,” which ran opposite “Midnight, Texas,” was fourth in the time slot and 52nd for the week, averaging 2.91 million viewers.
NBC was the mostwatched network for the fifth time in six weeks, averaging 4.71 million viewers. The only interruption to its streak came in the week of July 3-9 when it preempted original episodes of “America’s Got Talent” and “World of Dance” to air “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular.”
CBS averaged 4.27 million viewers to finish second for the fifth time in six weeks. ABC was third for the sixth consecutive week, averaging 3.1 million viewers.
Fox was fourth among the broadcast networks for the 25th consecutive week since airing Super Bowl LI, averaging 1.65 million viewers for its 15 hours of primetime programming.
NBC, CBS and ABC each aired 22 hours of prime-time programming for the week.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network in prime time for the 10th consecutive week, 15th time in 18 weeks, averaging 2.06 million viewers. MSNBC was second for the sixth time in eight weeks, averaging 1.82 million viewers. USA Network finished third, averaging 1.48 million.
CNN was ninth, two spots higher than a week earlier, averaging 964,000 viewers.