The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament helped “60 Minutes” draw its largest audience since Jan. 8 when CBS finished first in the network race for the sixth time in eight weeks.
The newsmagazine was the top-rated show between March 13 and Sunday, averaging 8.261 million viewers for a broadcast featuring a two-part report on the state of the US Navy and a Profile of billionaire businessman Rocco Commisso, owner of Italian soccer team ACF Fiorentina, according to live figures for the same day released by Nielsen on Tuesday.
“60 Minutes” followed a 39-minute extension of CBS’s evening coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in the Eastern and Central time zones.
The Jan. 8 edition of “60 Minutes” averaged a season-high 11.215 million viewers for Prince Harry’s first American television interview in connection with the release of his memoir “Spare.”
The only other two prime-time shows averaging more than 7 million viewers also aired on CBS: “NCIS,” second of the week with an average of 7.187 million viewers, and “FBI,” third with a average of 7,164 million.
CBS had 11 of the top 12 shows in prime time and averaged 5.15 million viewers. Those included the highest-rated primetime sporting event, Texas’s 71-66 win over Penn State in a second-round NCAA men’s basketball game on Saturday, fifth of the week, averaging 6.631 million viewers. ; the highest-rated comedy “The Neighborhood,” eighth with an average of 5.534 million viewers; the ratings leader for shows starting at 10 pm, “NCIS: Hawai’i,” ninth, with an average of 5.153 million viewers; and the most popular first-season show, the crime drama, “East New York,” at No. 15, with an average of 4.745 million.
The only times CBS hasn’t finished in first place in the past eight weeks were the weeks of February 6-13 when Fox aired Super Bowl LVII and March 6-12 when ABC aired the Oscars.
NBC finished in second place, averaging 2.94 million viewers. It had the leading non-CBS show, the March 13 edition of “The Voice,” which was fourth for the week with an average of 6.99 million viewers.
ABC ranked third, averaging 2.85 million viewers, with “American Idol” topping its lineup for the fourth time in the five weeks it has aired this season, averaging 4.884 million viewers, the 14th of the week. The only break in that streak was the week that ABC aired the Oscars.
Fox averaged 2.21 million viewers. The procedural drama “9-1-1” was its top show for the second week in a row, finishing in 17th place with an average of 4.381 million viewers.
The CW averaged 470,000 viewers. The premiere of the third season of the superhero drama “Superman & Lois” was its biggest draw with an average of 747,000 viewers, ranking 145th among programs broadcast. His overall ranking was not available.
The CW aired the week’s only premiere on all five major English-language networks, the superhero drama about Gotham City after the assassination of Bruce Wayne, “Gotham Knights,” which ranked second among CW shows and the 167 among broadcast shows, averaging 609,000 viewers after “Superman & Lois.”
The top 20 primetime shows consisted of nine scripted shows from CBS, its newsmagazine “60 Minutes” and its alternative series “Survivor”; two editions of the NBC singing contest, “La Voz”; an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game on CBS and TNT; three ABC shows, the alternative shows “American Idol” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and the scripted fire drama “Station 19,” and two Fox shows, “9-1-1” and the singing competition, “The Masked Singer”. ”
The highest-rated cable program was TNT’s coverage of Fairleigh Dickinson’s 63-58 victory over Purdue on Friday, when Fairleigh Dickinson became the second 16th-seeded team in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to defeat a seeded No. 1. The game averaged 4.371 million viewers, on the 18th of the week.
Fox News Channel won the battle of the prime-time cable networks for the eighth consecutive week, averaging 1.949 million viewers.
TNT was second with an average of 1.866 million viewers, TBS third with an average of 1.761 million and truTV fourth with an average of 1.125 million viewers. All three networks broadcast the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games.
MSNBC was the other cable network averaging more than 1 million viewers for its primetime lineup, averaging 1.078 million.
The top 20 cable consisted of nine NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games and three tournament studio shows; six Fox News Channel weekday political talk shows (four broadcasts of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and two of “Hannity”); History’s “The Haunting of Oak Island”; and MSNBC’s news and opinion show, “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
“The Glory” was the most watched show on Netflix for the second week in a row, with viewers spending 123.59 million hours watching all 16 episodes of the South Korean revenge thriller, including the second eight episodes of the first season that aired. premiered on March 10. Viewership was down less than 1% from the 124.46 million hours watched the previous week.
“Luther: The Fallen Sun” was Netflix’s most popular movie for the second week in a row, with viewers watching the sequel to the BBC’s psychological crime thriller for 69.54 million hours, up 5.5% from 65 .92 million hours watched the week before when it was available. for three days.
