In week stuffed with repeats, CBS dominates its rivals in Nielsen ratings

In week stuffed with repeats, CBS dominates rivals

NEW YORK — The television ratings makes it look like CBS was the only broadcast network working last week.

Take away Sunday’s NFL broadcast and its pregame shows on NBC, plus “The Simpsons” on Fox, and every show in the Nielsen Co.’s top 20 was on CBS.

CBS dominated with regular series like “NCIS” and “The Big Bang Theory,” and the “Survivor: Samoa” finale. Twelve of the network’s regular, nonsports series last week were seen by more than 10 million people; the other networks had none.

Jay Leno’s prime-time show had some small signs of life last week, particularly against poor-performing ABC shows like “Castle,” ”The Forgotten” and “Eastwick.”

Over on cable, the Kardashians continued to deliver for the E! Entertainment network. Sunday night’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” special had 4.2 million viewers, the most-watched program in E! Entertainment’s history, Nielsen said.

CBS averaged 11.5 million viewers in prime-time last week (7.0 rating, 12 share), a huge margin over second-place NBC’s 7.3 million (4.5, 8). Fox averaged 6.7 million viewers (4.1, 7), ABC had 4.9 million (3.1, 5), the CW had 1.5 million (1.0, 2) and ION Television had 1.2 million (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with an average of 3.4 million viewers (1.7 rating, 3 share). TeleFutura had a 1.1 million average and Telemundo 960,000 (both 0.5, 1) and Azteca had 200,000 (0.1, 0).

On his farewell “World News” broadcast on ABC last Friday, Charles Gibson beat NBC’s “Nightly News” by 250,000 viewers, Nielsen said. NBC and Brian Williams won the week, however, making it 61 wins out of the last 62. “Nightly News” averaged 9.2 million viewers for the week (6.0 rating, 11 share), “World News” had 8.5 million (5.7, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.2 million (4.2, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Dec. 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “NCIS,” CBS, 20.69 million; NFL Football: Minnesota at Carolina, NBC, 18.19 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 17.5 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 16.37 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 15.77 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 15.58 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 15.58 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 14.68 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 14.18 million; “The Good Wife,” CBS, 14.17 million.

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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