July 17, 2014

 

By STEVEN HERBERT

City News Service

 

The CBS drama “Extant,” starring Halle Berry, drew the largest audience for a series premiere this summer and was last week’s most-watched prime-time program.

 

“Extant,” which averaged 9.58 million viewers, was also the summer’s most-watched premiere among viewers between the ages of 18-49, according tolive-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen today.

 

The show, whose executive producers include Steven Spielberg, was helped to the top of the overall ratings by the absence of an original Tuesday episode of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.” Each of the summer’s five original Tuesday episodes of “Talent” has averaged 11.14 million viewers.

 

NBC’s two comedy premieres received a lackluster response from viewers. “Welcome to Sweden” averaged 3.51 million viewers, finishing fourth in its Thursday 9-9:30 p.m. time slot and 67th among prime-time broadcast and cable programs airing between July 7 and Sunday.

 

“Working the Engels,” which followed, averaged 2.73 million viewers, finishing fifth in its Thursday 9:30-10 p.m. time slot and 95th for the week.

 

CBS had five of the six prime-time programs to average more than 7 million viewers and was the most-watched network for the fourth consecutive week, averaging 5.61 million viewers, followed by NBC (4.6 million) and ABC (4.25 million).

 

Fox averaged 2.74 million viewers, putting it fourth among the English-language networks and fifth overall behind the Spanish-language Univision network, which averaged 2.78 million viewers.

 

CBS was first among coveted viewers ages 18-49, averaging 1.36 million, with the NBC and Univision tying for second, each averaging 1.35 million.

 

CBS had the week’s two most-watched broadcast programs in the category — the Sunday and Thursday episodes of “Big Brother.” Fox’s “MasterChef” was third in the category, followed by the Wednesday episode of “Big Brother” and ABC’s “The Bachelorette.”

 

The TNT crime drama “Rizzoli & Isles” was the most-watched prime-time cable program for the second consecutive week, averaging 5.13 million viewers, putting it 28th among the week’s prime-time broadcast and cable programs.

 

TNT was the week’s most-watched cable network for the third consecutive week, averaging 2.01 million viewers. It also had the week’s second- and third-most-watched prime-time cable programs, the drama “Major Crimes” and “The Last Ship,” respectively.

 

The week’s most-watched Spanish-language prime-time program was the Wednesday episode of the Univision telenovela “Lo Que La Vida Me Robo,” which averaged 3.98 million viewers — 49th among all prime-time broadcast and cable programs.

 

As usual, Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network, averaging 2.78 million viewers. Telemundo was second (1.48 million), followed by UniMas (570,000), Estrella TV (180,000), MundoFox (120,000) and Azteca America (60,000).

 

The “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” was the most-watched network nightly newscast for the 252nd consecutive week and 299th of the past 300, averaging 7.75 million viewers, followed by ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer”' (7.24 million) and the “CBS Evening News” anchored by Scott Pelley (6.08 million).

 

The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were “Extant,” “60 Minutes” and “NCIS”; the 8 p.m. Tuesday rerun of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” and “Under the Dome”; ABC’s “The Bachelorette”; and CBS’ Sunday edition of “Big Brother,” “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “Blue Bloods.”

 

Category: Arts & Culture