The prime-time “stars” of this summer are regular folks willing to humiliate themselves on national television.
Three new games – ABC's “Wipeout” and “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” and NBC's “Celebrity Family Feud” all debuted in Nielsen Media Research's top 10 last week. Except for “60 Minutes” and reruns of “CSI: Miami and “Two and a Half Men,” everything in Nielsen's top 10 was a game.
Only NBC's “America's Got Talent” topped 10 million viewers last week.
CBS won the week, averaging 6.6 million viewers (4.4 rating, 8 share). NBC had 6.3 million (4.0, 7); Fox had 5.7 million (3.5, 6); ABC had 5.1 million (3.3, 6); the CW had 1.7 million (1.1, 2); My Network TV had 960,000 (0.7, 1); and Ion Television had 420,000 (0.3, 1)
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision had 3.3 million (1.7, 3); Telemundo had 930,000 (0.6, 1); Telefutura had 540,000 (0.3, 1); and Azteca had 110,000 (0.1, 0).
NBC's “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.6 million viewers (5.2, 11). ABC's “World News” was second with 6.9 million (4.9, 11), and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.6 million viewers (3.8, 8).
A ratings point represents 1,128,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
Here are the prime-time ratings as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for June 23-29:
1. “America's Got Talent,” NBC
2. “Wipeout,” ABC
3. “60 Minutes,” CBS
4. “Two and a Half Men,” CBS
5. “Celebrity Family Feud,” NBC
6. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Thursday), Fox
7. “Million Dollar Password,” CBS
8. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Wednesday), Fox
9. “CSI: Miami,” CBS
10. “I Survived a Japanese Game Show,” ABC
11. “Baby Borrowers,” NBC
12. “Criminal Minds,” CBS
13. “NCIS,” CBS
14. “Hell's Kitchen,” Fox
15. “CSI: NY,” CBS
16. “48 Hours Mystery” (Tuesday), CBS
17. “The Bachelorette,” ABC
18. “House,” Fox
19. “Dateline,” NBC
20. “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS
