NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” drew its largest audience of the season, averaging more viewers than any of its episodes since 2011, other than season finales and final performance episodes, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.
The July 25 “America’s Got Talent” episode averaged 13.077 million viewers, more than the combined viewership of the programming on ABC, CBS, Fox and The CW running opposite it.
“America’s Got Talent” was the only prime-time program airing between July 24 and Sunday to average more than 10 million viewers and the only broadcast program to average more than 7 million viewers.
Each of the last five first-run episodes has been the most-watched program of its week. An original “America’s Got Talent” episode has been the most-watched entertainment program in each of the eight weeks of television’s 2017 summer season that one has aired.
The third episode of the seventh season of the HBO fantasy drama “Game of Thrones” was second for the week, and was the most-watched cable program, averaging 9.245 million viewers. The audience was the third largest in the series’ history, behind the season premiere, which averaged 10.105 million, and the season’s second episode, which averaged 9.27 million.
“Game of Thrones” was the week’s most-watched program among viewers ages 18-49, averaging 5.516 million viewers among the group targeted by ABC, Fox, NBC and many cable networks and coveted by advertisers.
“America’s Got Talent” was second among the group, averaging 3.393 million, followed by the Thursday, Sunday and Wednesday episodes of CBS’ “Big Brother,” which averaged 2.458 million, 2.421 million and 2.32 million.
NBC’s supernatural thriller “Midnight, Texas,” was the most-watched of the week’s two series premieres, averaging 3.571 million viewers, finishing first in its 10-11 p.m. time slot July 24th, and 32nd for the week.
The premiere of ABC’s suspense thriller Somewhere Between” which ran opposite “Midnight, Texas,” was fourth in the time slot and 52nd for the week, averaging 2.906 million viewers.
NBC was the most-watched network for the fifth time in six weeks, averaging 4.71 million viewers. The only interruption to its streak came in the week of July 3-9 when it pre-empted original episodes of America’s Got Talent” and “World of Dance” to air “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular.”
CBS averaged 4.27 million viewers to finish second for the fifth time in six weeks. ABC was third for the sixth consecutive week, averaging 3.1 million viewers.
Fox was fourth among the broadcast networks for the 25th consecutive week since airing Super Bowl LI, averaging 1.65 million viewers for its 15 hours of prime-time programming.
NBC, CBS and ABC each aired 22 hours of prime-time programming for the week.
Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network in prime time for the 10th consecutive week, 15th time in 18 weeks and 24th in the past 28, averaging 2.059 million viewers. MSNBC was second for the sixth time in eight weeks, averaging 1.82 million viewers. USA Network finished third, averaging 1.477 million.
CNN was ninth, two spots higher than a week earlier, averaging 964,000 viewers.
The most-watched Spanish-language prime-time program was the Tuesday episode of the Univision miniseries Jose de Egito, which averaged 2.331 million viewers to finish 81st overall.
Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network for the 37th consecutive week and 40th time in 41 weeks, averaging 1.44 million viewers.
Telemundo was second, averaging 1.39 million viewers, followed by UniMas, which averaged 440,000 viewers, Estrella TV, which averaged 200,000 and Azteca America, which averaged 80,000.
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was the most-watched nightly network newscast for the ninth consecutive week, averaging 7.553 million viewers. The “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” was second, averaging 7.212 million viewers.
The “CBS Evening News” was third, averaging 5.574 million viewers in Anthony Mason’s sixth week as interim anchor. The “CBS Evening News” has finished third each week since the week of Sept. 25-29, 2006.
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; HBO’s “Game of Thrones”; NBC’s “World of Dance”; ABC’s “The Bachelorette”; CBS’ Wednesday edition of “Big Brother,” “NCIS,” the Thursday and Sunday editions of “Big Brother,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “60 Minutes.”
