NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball’s All-Star game is fading as a midsummer television attraction, but the adjunct Home Run Derby is becoming popular in its own right.
The Nielsen company says a little more than 8 million people watched Tuesday’s All-Star game on Fox, enough to be the second-most popular thing on television after “America’s Got Talent” last week. The derby where sluggers flex their muscles a day before the game was televised on ESPN and reached 5.4 million viewers.
New York Mets rookie Pete Alonso won the Home Run Derby. The American League took the All-Star game.
The four major broadcast networks all struggled to find viewers during a quiet July week. CBS was in the unusual position of fourth place, although summer ratings don’t mean much to the networks.
NBC won the week in prime time, averaging 3.6 million viewers. ABC had 3.2 million, Fox had 3.1 million, CBS had 3 million, ION Television had 1.5 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million, Univision had 1.1 million and the CW had 660,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.28 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.54 million, ESPN had 1.47 million, HGTV had 1.27 million and TLC had 1.15 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8 million viewers, NBC’s Nightly News” had 6.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million.
For the week of July 8-14, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, 9.81 million; MLB All-Star Game, Fox, 8.15 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.35 million; “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 6.05 million; “Bring the Funny,” NBC, 5.97 million; “Home Run Derby,” ESPN, 5.41 million; “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 5.044 million; “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 5.041 million; “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 4.5 million; “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 4.2 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 21st Century Fox. 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