CBS takes weekly Nielsen crown behind ’60 Minutes’

Nov 19, 2019 | 3:16 PM

NEW YORK — CBS won the television ratings crown last week despite being without the most valuable ratings commodity in this era, a prime-time football game.

Two relatively lacklustre games on NBC and Fox last week enabled CBS’ strong entertainment schedule to rule the week, the Nielsen company said. The long-running “60 Minutes” newsmagazine was CBS’ top-rated program.

The week’s best prime-time football game was the “Monday Night Football” matchup between Seattle and San Francisco on ESPN, making it the rare week where a program on cable was the most-watched television show.

CBS averaged 5.2 million viewers last week. NBC had 4.7 million viewers, ABC had 4.3 million, Fox had 3.5 million, Univision had 1.1 million, ION Television had 1 million, Telemundo had 850,000 and the CW had 610,000.

ESPN was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 3.17 million viewers in prime time. In a strong news week, Fox News Channel averaged 2.75 million viewers and MSNBC had 1.96 million. Hallmark had 1.65 million viewers and HGTV had 1.04 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.1 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 8.4 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6 million viewers.

For the week of Nov. 11-17, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Seattle at San Francisco, ESPN, 16.95 million; NFL Football: Chicago at L.A. Rams, NBC, 16.85 million; NFL Football: Pittsburgh at Cleveland, Fox, 15.66 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 13.2 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 12.2 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 11.66 million; “CMA Awards,” ABC, 11.28 million; “NFL Pregame Show,” Fox, 9.64 million; “Football Night in America, Part 3,” NBC, 9.47 million; “Young Sheldon, CBS, 9.06 million.

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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 is owned by Fox Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

David Bauder, The Associated Press