Los Angeles Times

NBC wins, ‘Thrones’ breaks its own record

- By City News Service

Here are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (July 31-Aug. 6), as compiled by Nielsen. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish during its scheduled telecast or on a playback device the same day. Nielsen estimates there are 289 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions.

“Game of Thrones” drew the largest audience in its seven-season history while NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” drew a season-high audience for the second consecutiv­e episode last week.

The HBO fantasy drama averaged 10.17 million viewers, erasing the previous record of 10.11 million set by the season premiere July 16, according to live-plus-sameday figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.

Each of the season’s four episodes is among the four most-watched during the series run. They have also finished second each week behind “America’s Got Talent” and been the mostwatche­d cable program.

“America’s Got Talent” averaged 13.33 million viewers to be the most-watched prime-time program between July 31 and Sunday.

Each of the last six firstrun episodes of “America’s Got Talent” 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 nine weeks of television’s 2017 summer season that one has aired.

Viewership for NBC’s coverage of the NFL/Hall of Fame Game was 24.9% smaller than the last time the game was played, but still was the week’s third most-watched program, averaging 8.25 million.

The Dallas Cowboys 20-18 victory over the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday was the first time the game was played on a weeknight.

Figures for cable telecasts were not immediatel­y available.

“Game of Thrones” was the week’s most-watched program among viewers ages 18-49, averaging 5.91 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 3.54 million, followed by the NFL/ Hall of Fame Game, which averaged 3.23 million, and the Sunday, Thursday and Wednesday episodes of CBS’ “Big Brother,” which averaged 2.55 million, 2.5 million and 2.47 million.

NBC has been the mostwatche­d network for six of the past seven weeks. The only interrupti­on to the streak came in the week of July 3-9 when it pre-empted original episodes of “America’s Got Talent” and “World of Dance” to air “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacula­r.” CBS finished second for the sixth time in seven weeks.

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