NEW YORK (AP) – Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez showed star power on television last week, with their “Dateline NBC” interview leading the network to a weekly win in the ratings race.
The movie stars, who are engaged, talked to “Access Hollywood” correspondent Pat O’Brien about their relationship, and the interview ranked among Nielsen Media Research’s top 10 shows.
Two new NBC reality series debuted to decent, if unspectacular, ratings: “Who Wants to Marry My Dad?” ranked 20th for the week with 8.5 million viewers, and “The Restaurant” premiered to 7.5 million patrons, ranking 33rd.
Fox’s telecast of the major league baseball All-Star Game was the week’s most-watched prime-time program, with 13.8 million viewers.
NBC averaged 7.9 million prime-time viewers last week (5.5 rating, 10 share), edging CBS and its 7.8 million viewers (5.4, 10). Fox had 6.7 million (4.4, 8), ABC 5.2 million (3.5, 7), UPN 3 million (2.0, 4), the WB 2.6 million (1.8, 3) and Pax TV 910,000 (0.7, 1).
NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.7 million viewers (6.3 rating, 14 share). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 8.1 million (5.9, 13) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.9 million (5.0, 11).
A ratings point represents 1,067,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 106.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of July 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Major League Baseball All-Star Game,” Fox, 13.8 million; “Law & Order,” NBC, 12.5 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 12 million; “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS, 11.1 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 10.8 million; “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” NBC, 10.6 million; “Dateline NBC-Thursday,” NBC, 10.6 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 10.5 million; “King of Queens,” CBS, 10.5 million; “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC, 10.4 million.
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