NBC’s ‘Chicago’ series have strong showings but CBS wins weekly TV ratings race

“Chicago Fire” was the top-ranked primetime program last week, averaging 6.993 million viewers, and “Chicago Med,” which preceded it on NBC, was one of only four other primetime programs to average over 6 million. viewers.

“Chicago Med’s” average of 6.515 million viewers ranked fourth among prime-time programs broadcast between Feb. 20 and Sunday, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday.

“Chicago PD” averaged 5.705 million viewers following “Chicago Fire”, sixth for the week and first among programs beginning at 10 p.m., which is generally watched less live and on the same day than programs starting earlier.

CBS had three of the five most-watched programs of the week and finished first in the network race for the fourth time in five weeks, a run interrupted only by Fox’s coverage of Super Bowl LVII. CBS did not finish first in any of the first 18 weeks of the 2022-2023 television season. NBC has finished first 14 times during the 17 weeks of the season so far, mainly due to “Sunday Night Football.”

CBS averaged 3.78 million viewers, NBC 3.43 million and ABC 2.97 million.

“FBI” was CBS’s ratings leader, averaging 6.892 million viewers to finish second, one spot ahead of “60 Minutes,” which averaged 6.879 million. “The Equalizer” averaged 6.514 million viewers after “60 Minutes” on CBS, fifth of the week.

CBS also had the highest-ranked series of the week’s first season, the police drama “East New York,” ranked 15th for the week, averaging 4.657 million viewers, and the most popular comedy, a rerun of “Young Sheldon,” ranked 18th, with an average of 4,332. million.

“American Idol” led the ABC programming for the second time in the two weeks it aired this season, averaging 5.247 million viewers, retaining 99.6% of the audience from the season premiere a week earlier, which averaged 5.269 million viewers.

Fox averaged 2.04 million viewers for its primetime programming, topped by “The Masked Singer”, the 23rd of the week, averaging 3.833 million viewers.

The CW averaged 480,000 viewers. The biggest draw, for the third time in four weeks, was the magic competition series “Penn & Teller: Fool Us”, which averaged 686,000 viewers, 162nd among programs broadcast. The overall ranking was not available.

The top 20 prime-time programs consisted of nine CBS scripted programs, the news magazine “60 Minutes” and the alternative program “The Price Is Right at Night”; five NBC scripted programs and the alternative program “America’s Got Talent: All-Stars”; and the ABC alternative programs “American Idol” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and the scripted cop drama “The Rookie”.

Each of the top five prime-time cable shows were editions of the Fox News Channel’s political talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” with Wednesday’s broadcast at the top, which averaged 3.184 million viewers, 33rd overall.

Fox News Channel won the primetime cable network race for the fifth consecutive week, averaging 2.065 million viewers. ESPN averaged 1.058 million viewers and finished second, up three places from the week before when it averaged 820,000. MSNBC finished third for the second consecutive week after a second-place finish, averaging 1.033 million.

The cable top 20 consisted of 13 Fox News Channel weekday talk shows (five broadcasts each of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” and three of “The Ingraham Angle”) and the Sunday talk show “Life, Liberty & Levin”; the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show”; History of “The Curse of Oak Island”; all three hour-long segments of the USA Network’s “WWE Raw”; and TNT’s coverage of the Lakers’ 124-111 victory over the Golden State Warriors Thursday.

The third season of “Outer Banks” was Netflix’s most-streamed program, with viewers watching the adventure drama’s 10 episodes for 154.97 million hours in their first four days of availability, according to figures released by the streaming service on Tuesday. released.

“We Have a Ghost” was Netflix’s most popular movie, with viewers watching 40.47 million hours of the horror comedy in its first three days of release.