High school musical ‘Glee,’ romantic mystery ‘Castle’ are new generation of hits for Fox, ABC

‘Glee,’ ‘Castle’ are new era of hits for Fox, ABC

NEW YORK — The high school musical “Glee” and romantic mystery “Castle” are becoming a new generation of hits for Fox and ABC.

Both finished in the Nielsen Co.’s top 10 prime-time shows last week and were the most popular scripted shows on their networks. “Glee” is making magazine covers and generating buzz for Fox just as one of its old buzzworthy shows, “24,” is getting ready to exit.

“Castle” has had its four most-watched episodes in the past four weeks for ABC and is supplanting the aging “Desperate Housewives” as ABC’s most popular drama.

Meanwhile, the week’s most popular scripted show was the CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men” with its troubled star Charlie Sheen.

It was a particularly competitive week for the networks, with CBS the most popular network and Fox easily winning among the 18-to-49-year-old audience that it seeks.

CBS averaged 9.2 million viewers (5.8 rating, 10 share), Fox had 8.6 million (5.2, 9), ABC had 7.8 million (5.0, 9), NBC had 5.7 million (3.6, 6), the CW had 1.8 million (1.2, 2) and ION Television had 990,000 (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.2 million prime-time average (1.7 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 890,000 (0.4, 1), Estrella had 250,000 and Azteca had 200,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.7 million viewers (5.2, 11). ABC’s “World News” was second with 7 million (4.8, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5 million viewers (3.4, 7).

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 April 12-18, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 21.02 million; “American Idol” (Tuesday), Fox, 20.64 million; “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 20.56 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 13.71 million; “Glee,” Fox, 13.66 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 13.6 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 13.39 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 13.19 million; “Academy of Country Music Awards,” CBS, 13.02 million; “Castle,” ABC, 12.68 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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