Competitions lead in Nielsen competition

Competitions lead in Nielsen competition

	Published : Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:45 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - Competitions continued to dominate prime time.

Eight of broadcast television's 20 most popular programs last week featured contestants competing on their ability to dance, remember song lyrics, cook, impersonate celebrities or display some other talent, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Add in CBS' 'Big Brother' and two episodes of ABC's hidden-camera 'Just for Laughs,' and that means more than half of the top shows were fun and games.

No show reached 10 million viewers, though.

Even without 'American Idol,' Fox has continued to keep its grip on youth. Last week was the 25th straight it has won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic advertisers pay a premium for.

Among all viewers, CBS led by averaging 6.3 million in prime time (4.3 rating, 8 share), while Fox had 5.8 million (3.7, 7). NBC was third with 5.4 million viewers (3.5, 7), ABC 5 million (3.3, 6), the CW 1.9 million (1.2, 2), My Network TV 830,000 (0.6, 1) and ION Television 600,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 3 million viewers (1.6, 3), Telemundo had 980,000 (0.5, 1), TeleFutura 650,000 (0.4, 1) and Azteca 80,000 (0.1, 0).

Charles Gibson was back from vacation, and ABC's 'World News' was back on top in the evening news ratings race, averaging 7.5 million viewers (5.3 rating, 12 share). NBC's 'Nightly News' had 7.2 million viewers (5.1, 11) and the 'CBS Evening News' 5.9 million (4.2, 9).

A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of July 23-29, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: 'America's Got Talent,' NBC, 9.83 million; 'The Singing Bee,' NBC, 9.49 million; 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,' CBS, 9.34 million; 'So You Think You Can Dance' (Thursday), Fox, 9.15 million; 'Hell's Kitchen,' Fox, 8.89 million; 'Don't Forget the Lyrics' (Thursday), Fox, 8.83 million; 'Two and a Half Men,' CBS, 8.79 million; '60 Minutes,' CBS, 8.69 million; 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader' (Monday), Fox, 8.58 million; 'Shark' (Thursday), CBS, 8.19 million.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.