ABC finds an encouraging note in popular premiere of final season of ‘Lost’

‘Lost’ premiere sets encouraging note for ABC

NEW YORK — Fans still found “Lost,” even on a busy television week dominated by the Super Bowl.

The genre-busting mystery opened its final season last Tuesday with 12.1 million viewers, the Nielsen Co. said. That’s an increase of 6 percent over the audience for the 2009 season debut.

Among younger viewers, it was the best performance for “Lost” in two years, ABC said. Producers intend to wrap up the series in May. Nearly 10 million people watched a video crib sheet bringing viewers up to date on the story an hour earlier than the debut, even though it competed against “American Idol” and “NCIS.”

A closer look at national ratings showed the Super Bowl captured 106.5 million viewers, confirming its new status as the most-watched U.S. television event ever.

Even if it hadn’t had the Super Bowl, it was a good week for CBS. Of the 14 most-watched programs last week, 12 were on CBS and the other two were “American Idol” editions.

Its numbers inflated by the Super Bowl, CBS averaged 26.2 viewers in prime time last week (13.0 rating, 21 share). Fox averaged 9.1 million viewers (5.2, 8), ABC had 7 million (4.4, 7), NBC had 4.7 million (3.1, 5), the CW had 1.9 million (1.2. 2) and ION Television had 1.1 million (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led the way with an average of 3.7 million viewers (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million and TeleFutura had 1 million (both 0.5, 1) and Azteca had 160,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 10 million viewers (6.5, 12). ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.6 million (5.7, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.5 million viewers (4.4, 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 Feb. 1-7, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Super Bowl: Indianapolis vs. New Orleans, CBS, 106.48 million; “Super Bowl Post Game,” CBS, 75.47 million; “Undercover Boss,” CBS, 38.65 million; “American Idol” (Tuesday), Fox, 24.71 million; “American Idol,” (Wednesday), Fox, 21 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 19.23 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 16.51 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,’ CBS, 16.42 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 15.51 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 14.75 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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