It must have felt like the good ol' days at NBC: the three most-watched prime-time programs and "Nightly News" back on top of the ratings. Too bad it's the middle of summer, when few people are paying attention.
NBC's "The Singing Bee" was the most popular program for the second week in a row, according to Nielsen Media Research. With 11 million viewers, it's hardly a sensation, but host Joey Fatone can at least claim bragging rights over Fox's similar guess-the-lyrics show.
"America's Got Talent" was the only other program with more than 10 million viewers last week, and a rerun of "Law & Order: SVU" rounded out the top three.
"Nightly News" with Brian Williams beat ABC's "World News" for the first time in a couple of months. However, ABC lead anchor Charles Gibson was on vacation last week.
CBS still won the week, averaging 6.2 million prime-time viewers (4.3 rating, 8 share). NBC had 6 million viewers (3.9, 7), Fox had 5.5 million (3.5, 6), ABC 4.7 million (3.2, 6), the CW 1.9 million (1.3, 2), My Network TV 1 million (0.7, 1) and ION Television 610,000 (0.4, 1).
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision had 3.2 million viewers (1.7, 3), Telemundo 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura 510,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca 80,000 (no rating).
"Nightly News" averaged 7.5 million viewers last week (5.3 rating, 11 share), "World News" had 7.2 million (5.1, 11) and the "CBS Evening News" 5.7 million (4.1, 9).
A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of July 16-22, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "The Singing Bee," NBC, 11.03 million; "America's Got Talent," NBC, 10.38 million; "Law & Order: SVU," NBC, 9.45 million; "So You Think You Can Dance" (Thursday), Fox, 9.07 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 8.91 million; "CSI: NY," CBS, 8.67 million; "Just For Laughs," ABC, 8.65 million; "Don't Forget the Lyrics" (Thursday), Fox, 8.36 million; "Shark" (Thursday), CBS, 8.31 million; "Hell's Kitchen," Fox, 8.25 million.