Super Bowl 50 gave CBS the most-watched week of prime- time television programming since Fox aired Super Bowl XLVIII two years ago, according to figures released today by Nielsen.
With Super Bowl 50 averaging 111.86 million viewers — the third most- watched program in U.S. television history — CBS averaged 25.17 million viewers for its prime-time programming between Feb. 1 and Sunday, according to Nielsen’s live-plus-same day figures.
CBS also had the week’s most-watched show outside of Sunday’s programming, “The Big Bang Theory,” which averaged 15.29 million.
ABC was second overall last week, averaging 5.95 million viewers, followed by NBC (4.47 million) and Fox (4.16 million).
Saturday’s Republican presidential debate on ABC averaged 13.34 million viewers, the third-lowest television audience among the campaign’s eight Republican debates. It was the first GOP debate to be held on a Saturday, traditionally the least-watched night of television.
The Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC Thursday averaged 4.47 million viewers, the least-watched of the party’s six debates this campaign.
The week’s most-watched cable program was the premiere of FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” which averaged 5.11 million viewers.
But Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network for the third consecutive week, averaging 2.19 million viewers. USA Network was second, averaging 1.6 million.
The most-watched Spanish-language program was the Thursday episode of the Univision telenovela “Pasion y Poder,” which averaged 2.39 million viewers, for 98th overall.
As usual, Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network, averaging 1.74 million viewers. Telemundo was second, averaging 1.25 million, followed by UniMas (530,000), Estrella TV (230,000), MundoMax (140,000) and Azteca America (110,000).
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was the most-watched network nightly newscast, after finishing second behind the “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” for 30 of the previous 32 weeks.
ABC’s newscast averaged 9.27 million viewers to 9.23 million for NBC.
The “CBS Evening News” was third, as it has been throughout Scott Pelley’s tenure as anchor, averaging 7.75 million.
The week’s 10 most-watched prime-time programs were Super Bowl 50, its seven-minute postgame show immediately following the game and a second postgame show that ran for 25 minutes; CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory”; ABC’s coverage of Saturday’s Republican presidential debate; the CBS special, “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials”; Fox’s Wednesday broadcast of “American Idol”; CBS’ “Life in Pieces”; and Fox’s Thursday “American Idol” broadcast and “The X- Files.”
