Prime-time `stars' of summer are regular folks
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK — 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 5.7 million (3.5, 6), ABC 5.1 million (3.3, 6), the CW 1.7 million (1.1, 2), My Network TV 960,000 (0.7, 1) and Ion Television 420,000 (0.3, 1)
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision had 3.3 million (1.7, 3), Telemundo 930,000 (0.6, 1), Telefutura 540,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca 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.
For the week of June 23-29, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent," NBC, 11.68 million; "Wipeout," ABC, 9.98 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 9.42 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 9.22 million; "Celebrity Family Feud," NBC. 8.82 million; "So You Think You Can Dance" (Thursday), Fox, 8.63 million; Million Dollar Password," CBS, 8.49 million; "So You Think You Can Dance" (Wednesday), Fox, 8.29 million; "CSI: Miami," CBS, 8.19 million; "I Survived a Japanese Game Show," ABC, 8 million.
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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.
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