Olympics gone, so are many viewers

[August 22, 2012]  NEW YORK (AP) -- With the Olympics gone, so are many of broadcast television's prime-time viewers.

No broadcast program exceeded 10 million viewers last week, the Nielsen company said Tuesday. NBC's "America's Got Talent" on Tuesday was closest, finishing just under that mark.

Between "Talent" and an exhibition football game last Saturday, NBC kept the crown as the most-watched network for one more week, after taking the previous three weeks because of the Olympics. NBC also debuted a new season of "Grimm" and the military-themed reality show "Stars Earn Stripes" that both finished among Nielsen's top 20, but with less than six million viewers each.

NBC averaged 5.3 million viewers for the week in prime time (3.3 rating, 6 share), CBS had 5.1 million (3.4, 6), Fox had 4.3 million (2.6, 5), ABC had 3.7 million (2.4, 4), ION Television had 1.1 million (0.7, 1) and the CW had 720,000 (0.5, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.3 million viewers (1.8, 3), Telemundo had 1.2 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 520,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 200,000 and Azteca 100,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.8 million viewers (5.2, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 7 million (4.7, 10) and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.5 million viewers (3.7, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Aug. 13-19, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 9.97 million; NFL Exhibition Football: Indianapolis vs. Pittsburgh, NBC, 9.51 million; "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 8.48 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.03 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.92 million; "NCIS," CBS, 7.29 million; "Two and a Half Men" (Thursday), CBS, 6.65 million; "Hell's Kitchen" (Monday), Fox, 6.58 million; "Big Brother 14" (Sunday), CBS, 6.57 million; "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 6.4 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com/

[Associated Press; By DAVID BAUDER]

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