ABC has strongest week in ratings in more than a year, with assist from country music

Country music awards boost ABC in the ratings

NEW YORK — Country music helped ABC to its best ratings week in more than a year.

The network, which narrowly lost to CBS for the distinction of America’s most popular TV network last week, aired the Country Music Association awards to 17.2 million people, according to the Nielsen Co.

ABC also did well with an “In the Spotlight” special in which Robin Roberts interviewed stars including Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw.

ABC and CBS dominated the upper reaches of the Nielsen charts; 24 of the nation’s most-watched programs last week were on one of the two networks. ABC is nearing the end of a “Dancing With the Stars” run, so that audience is growing.

A story line that played out across all three “CSI” franchises was a winner for CBS. All the shows earned a spot in Nielsen’s top 14 programs, with the mother ship, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” getting its biggest audience of the season.

There is also an indication that Sarah Palin remains a TV draw. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” had its best ratings, for her appearance last week Monday, since a show two years ago that reunited the Osmond family.

For the week, CBS averaged 11.5 million viewers (7.2 rating, 12 share). ABC had 11.2 million viewers (7.0, 11) and won among the coveted 18- to 49-year-old demographic. NBC had 8.1 million viewers (5.1, 8), Fox had 8 million (4.8, 8), the CW had 2.4 million (1.5, 2) and ION Television had 930,000 (0.6, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.3 million viewer average (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 970,000 (0.5, 1) and Azteca had 190,000 (0.1, 0).

It was another lopsided win for the NBC “Nightly News,” which averaged 9.4 million viewers (6.2 rating, 12 share). ABC’s “World News” averaged 8.4 million (5.7, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.7 million (4.6, 9).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Nov. 9-15, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “NBC Sunday Night Football: New England at Indianapolis,” NBC, 22.39 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 20.96 million; “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 17.62 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 17.38 million; “CMA Awards,” ABC, 17.18 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 17.02 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 16.233 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 16.231 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 16.17 million; “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 14.87 million.

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 and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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