"America's Got Talent" Leads Primetime Ratings

Updated 8:00 PM EDT, Tue, Aug 25, 2009

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While America's got talent, NBC still has a hit talent show in these waning weeks of summer.

"America's Got Talent" had the two top slots in prime time last week, as viewers flocked to see performers vying to move into the show's semifinal round.

Also in the reality realm, CBS' "Big Brother" did well, too, with its Tuesday installment landing in sixth place for the week.

The Sunday edition of ABC's quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" ranked ninth.

And on Fox, "Hell's Kitchen" finished 10th.

But for the most part, scripted episodic reruns claimed the audience's eyeballs — and many of the most-watched sitcoms and dramas were on CBS.

Overall in prime time, CBS was champ, averaging 5.81 million viewers NBC was runner-up with 5.56 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Fox was in third place with 5.14 million viewers, followed by ABC with 4.51 million, My Network TV with 1.55 million, the CW with 1.10 million, and ION Television with 570,000 viewers.

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision held its customary lead with a 3.21 million average audience. Telemundo had 1.01 million viewers, TeleFutura 950,000 viewers, and Azteca 210,000 viewers.

As usual, NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.38 million viewers. ABC's "World News" was second with 7.04 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.34 million viewers.

A ratings point represents 1,145,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.5 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Aug. 17-23, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent", NBC, 11.88 million; "America's Got Talent" , NBC, 10.67 million; "NCIS," CBS, 9.85 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 8.55 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.04 million; "Big Brother 11", CBS, 7.98 million; "The Mentalist," CBS, 7.85 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.77 million; "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", ABC, 7.59 million; "Hell's Kitchen," Fox, 7.49 million.

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