NBC stayed on top last week, with viewership down

NEW YORK — What a difference the Olympics makes, especially when it's over.

An average audience of more than 23 million viewers flocked to NBC for its final week of Summer Games coverage. Then, last week, the network's prime-time viewership plunged to 5.9 million.

Still, NBC had another winning round, and even scored the week's trifecta of most-watched shows, with the Tuesday edition of "America's Got Talent" in first place, followed by the Monday broadcast of "Deal Or No Deal," and the Wednesday "America's Got Talent."

Coverage of the Democratic National Convention claimed three slots in the week's top 20, with Thursday's acceptance speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 11th place (as carried by ABC) and 14th place (on NBC). NBC's Tuesday convention coverage ranked 16th.

For the week, NBC had a 3.8 household rating and 7 share, according to Nielsen Media Research figures released Wednesday.

Runner-up CBS averaged 5.3 million viewers (3.6 rating, 6 share), while Fox had 4.6 million viewers (3.0 rating, 5 share). ABC had 4.1 million viewers (2.8 rating, 5 share), CW 1.6 million viewers (1.1 rating, 2 share), My Network TV 1.1 million viewers (0.7 rating, 1 share), and ION 330,000 viewers (0.2 rating, 0 share).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.6 million viewers (1.9 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 930,000 viewers (0.5 rating, 1 share), TeleFutura 550,000 viewers (0.3 rating, 1 share), and Azteca 150,000 viewers (0.1 rating, 0 share).

In the evening news competition, NBC's "Nightly News" held its No. 1 position, averaging 7.8 million viewers (5.4 rating, 11 share), while ABC's "World News" had 7.1 million viewers (4.9 rating, 10 share) and the "CBS Evening News" 5.4 million viewers (3.7 rating, 8 share).

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.

For the week of Aug. 25-31, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 11.12 million; "Deal Or No Deal" (Monday), NBC, 11.00 million; "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 10.34 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 9.03 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 8.03 million; "NCIS," CBS, 7.45 million; "America's Toughest Jobs," NBC, 7.30 million; "Criminal Minds," CBS, 6.93 million; "House," Fox, 6.81 million; "New Adventures of Old Christine," CBS, 6.63 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 General Electric Co. 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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On the Net:

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