A big drop-off for ‘Roseanne’

ABC comedy falls 21.4% from the prior week. Overall, CBS leads the networks.

Viewership for the fifth episode of “Roseanne” dropped 21.4% from the fourth episode, failing to finish first in the weekly primetime television ratings for the first time this season.

The ABC comedy averaged 10.428 million viewers to finish fourth among primetime programs broadcast between April 30 and Sunday, according to live-plussame-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday. Its fourth episode, which aired April 17, averaged 13.27 million.

Viewership for most programs drops in the spring as a growing number of people spend more time out of their homes to take advantage of increased daylight.

The CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” was the most-watched program for the second consecutive week, averaging 12.928 million viewers, 9.6% more than its 11.797-million average a week earlier.

A 1-2-3 finish by “The Big Bang Theory,” “NCIS” and “Young Sheldon” helped CBS to its ninth consecutive weekly victory, the longest streak of the season for any network.

CBS averaged 6.74 million viewers for the week for its 16th victory in the 32week-old season. ABC was second for the third time in four weeks, averaging 4.94 million viewers. NBC was third, averaging 4.48 million.

Fox finished fourth among the major broadcast networks for the 15th consecutive week, averaging 2.51 million viewers for its 15 hours of prime-time programming. Its mostwatched program was the hip-hop drama “Empire,” which finished 32nd overall, averaging 5.287 million viewers, three spots higher than the previous week, despite a 1.1% drop in viewership.

CBS, ABC and NBC each broadcast 22 hours of programming for ratings purposes.

NBA playoff coverage made TNT the mostwatched cable network for the third consecutive week, averaging 3.324 million viewers, a 21.4% increase from the previous week when it averaged 2.737 million.

Fox News Channel was second, averaging 2.297 million viewers, and MSNBC third, averaging 1.712 million.

Each of the week’s six most-watched cable programs were NBA playoff games on TNT, topped by the Golden State Warriors’ 121-116 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans in Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series, which averaged 5.695 million viewers, finishing 28th overall, despite starting at 10:56 p.m. EDT May 1.

For the third consecutive week, TNT finished first among all networks among viewers ages 18-49, averaging 1.604 million viewers in the group coveted by advertisers. TNT’s viewership among young adults was up 17.9% from its 1.361-million average a week earlier.

ABC was second, averaging 1.45 million viewers, followed by NBC, which averaged 1.14 million, followed by CBS, which averaged 1.09 million, and Fox, which averaged 930,000.

Here are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (April 30-May 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.