The All-Stars shine for Fox
Fox’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game edged NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” to be last week’s most-watched prime-time television program despite near recordlow viewership.
The American League’s 6-3 victory over the National League on July 14 in Cincinnati averaged 10.91 million viewers, the game’s secondlowest in prime time, ahead of only the 2012 game, which averaged 10.9 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.
The All-Star Game had set record lows 10 of the 18 years from 1995 through 2012. Fox Broadcasting has carried the game each year since 2001. Viewership for most events has fallen over the last 25 years because of increased competition from cable television, watching recorded programming and online video and other leisure-time activities, including surfing the Internet and playing video games.
The two-hour Tuesday edition of “America’s Got Talent,” which ran opposite the All-Star Game pregame show and the game’s first one hour, 36 minutes, was second for the week, averaging 10.82 million viewers, the only other program to average more than 9 million viewers between July 13 and Sunday.
There was an element of the All-Star Game coverage whose viewership increased. The Home Run Derby on ESPN July 13 averaged 7.13 million viewers, its most since 2009 and the most for any cable during the week. It was seventh among the week’s prime-time programs.
The Home Run Derby was the week’s second-most watched program among viewers ages 18-49, averaging 3.23 million viewers among the group ABC, Fox and NBC target and advertisers covet because it watches less television and is harder to reach. The All-Star Game was first, averaging 3.9 million.
The move of the ESPY Awards from ESPN to ABC resulted in the sports awards ceremony drawing its largest audience, 7.75 million viewers, fifth for the week.
The ESPY Awards were the week’s most-tweeted about prime-time program with 1.23 million tweets between three hours before the start of the ceremony and three hours afterward. The Premios Juventud awards ceremony on Univision for Spanish-speaking celebrities in film, music, sports, fashion and pop culture was second with 773,000. It was 46th in viewership, averaging 3.87 million viewers.
CBS had five of the 11 most-watched prime-time programs to finish first in the network race for the third time in four weeks following the end of ABC’s coverage of the NBA Finals, averaging 5.15 million viewers.
are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (July 13 – 19) 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.