CBS holds top spot yet again PRIME-TIME TV RATINGS

Even with a ‘Bang’ rerun, the network leads for the eighth time in nine weeks.

The CBS network had four of last week’s five mostwatched prime-time series, even without an original episode of the season’s mostwatched scripted series, “The Big Bang Theory,” to finish first in the network race for the eighth time in nine weeks.

The long-running procedural “NCIS” was the mostwatched prime-time program between March 11 and Sunday, averaging 12.083 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.

The Monday edition of the NBC singing competition “The Voice” was second for the week, averaging 10.543 million viewers.

The CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” was the week’s only other program to average more than 9 million viewers, averaging 10.096 million to finish third for the week.

The rest of the top five consisted of “FBI,” which follows “NCIS,” and averaged 8.956 million viewers, and “NCIS: Los Angeles,” which averaged 8.47 million.

A rerun of “The Big Bang Theory” was the week’s most-watched comedy, finishing 12th overall, averaging 7.636 million viewers.

CBS averaged 6 million viewers for its 13th victory in the 24-week-old 2018-19 season.

ABC was second for the second consecutive week, averaging 5.06 million. Its most-watched program was “The Bachelor” season finale, sixth for the week averaging 8.235 million viewers, a 3.5% increase over last season’s finale which averaged 7.959 million.

NBC was third for the second consecutive week, averaging 4.5 million.

Fox averaged 2.65 million viewers for its 15 hours of programming to finish fourth for the ninth consecutive week. “Last Man Standing” was its most-watched program for the second consecutive week, averaging 5.164 million to finish 27th for the week.

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

The AMC horror series “The Walking Dead” was the most-watched cable program for the third consecutive week, averaging 4.566 million viewers, 34th overall.

Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network for the ninth consecutive week, averaging 2.329 million viewers.

Extensive college basketball conference tournament coverage lifted ESPN into second, two spots higher than a week earlier, averaging 1.935 million. MSNBC dropped one spot to third, averaging 1.817 million.

Here are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (March 11-17), 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.