Tiger helps CBS pounce
‘60 Minutes’ finishes 2nd behind NBC’s ‘America’s Got Talent’ with a boost from the PGA Championship.
Tiger Woods’ bid for his first major championship since 2008 helped lift “60 Minutes” to its largest audience of the summer, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday.
CBS’ coverage of the final round of the PGA Championship that preceded prime time’s “60 Minutes” averaged 8.5 million viewers, the most for a final round of that tournament since 2009. Woods finished second, two strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.
Sunday’s “60 Minutes” episode with three previously broadcast segments averaged 8.21 million viewers, the most since May 20 when the news magazine averaged 8.4 million viewers for three first-run stories on the final Sunday of the 2017-18 official television season.
“60 Minutes” finished second for the seventh time in the past nine weeks. It also finished first once during that stretch and third the week that Fox aired Major League Baseball’s AllStar Game.
NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” was the only other prime-time program to average more than 8 million viewers between Aug. 6 and Sunday, averaging 11.04 million viewers to finish first for the eighth time in the nine weeks since the conclusion of the NBA Finals.
“America’s Got Talent” has been the most-watched entertainment program every week an original episode has aired this summer and last summer.
The week’s only premiere on the four major broadcast networks, the ABC alternative series “Castaways,” averaged 3.129 million viewers.
“Castaways” retained 81.7% of the audience of the two-hour season premiere of “Bachelor in Paradise” that preceded it. “Bachelor in Paradise” averaged 3.83 million viewers, 22nd for the week.
“Castaways” was 32nd among the week’s broadcast and cable programs and third in its time slot behind a rerun of CBS’ “NCIS: New Orleans,” which came in at 15th for the week and averaged 4.42 million viewers, and the second episode of the NBC crafting competition series “Making It,” 18th with an average 4.15 million viewers, a 20% drop from the 5.19-million average from its premiere. The second episodes of nearly all broadcast series drop in viewership from the premieres.
Although “America’s Got Talent” was its only program among the week’s top eight, NBC was the most-watched network for the sixth consecutive week, averaging 4.08 million viewers.
NBC’s second-mostwatched program was “American Ninja Warrior,” ninth for the week, averaging 5.02 million viewers.
ABC averaged 3.85 million viewers to finish second after eight consecutive third-place finishes. ABC’s most-watched program was “The Bachelorette” season finale, which was third for the week, averaging 6.72 million, 11.3% less than the 7.58million average for last year’s “Bachelorette” season finale.
CBS averaged 3.79 million viewers to finish third after five consecutive secondplace finishes. It had five of the week’s eight mostwatched programs.
Fox finished fourth among the major broadcast networks for the 29th consecutive week, averaging 1.65 million viewers for its 15 hours, 41 minutes of primetime programming.
Fox’s most-watched program was “MasterChef,” 25th for the week, averaging 3.70 million viewers.
NBC, CBS and ABC all aired 22 hours of prime-time programming for ratings purposes.
The Tuesday episode of the Fox News Channel opinion talk show “Hannity” was the week’s most-watched cable television program, averaging 3.16 million viewers, 31st overall.
The Tuesday episode of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” was second among the week’s cable programs and 34th overall, averaging 3.07 million.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network for the 10th consecutive week, averaging 2.13 million viewers. MSNBC was second, averaging 1.71 million and HGTV third, averaging 1.33 million. are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (Aug. 6-12), 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.