The two-hour finale of NBC's "America's Got Talent" last Tuesday was the most-watched program on broadcast television in nearly three months with 13.9 million viewers, 16% more than last year's finale, according to figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.
The second season of "America's Got Talent" was the summer's most-watched series, averaging 11.4 million viewers a week, 3% more than a year ago. It was television's most-watched show eight times in the last 12 weeks.
The finale drew broadcast television's largest audience since May 29, when 17.3 million watched the season finale of the Fox Broadcasting medical drama "House."
Despite its success and NBC's need for highly watched programming as it attempts to move out of fourth place in the ratings, NBC has no plans to air "America's Got Talent" during television's official season, and it will remain a summer series, a network official said.
"America's Got Talent" helped lead to NBC's 1-2-3 sweep of the top prime-time programs among viewers ages 18 to49 between Aug. 20 and Sunday, enabling NBC to end Fox's 28-week winning streak among the group targeted by both networks and ABC and coveted by advertisers.
However, NBC couldn't end CBS' winning ways among all viewers, as CBS finished first overall for the 12th time in the 13 weeks of television's summer season, averaging 6.92 million viewers.
Viewership for the premiere of Fox's unscripted series "Anchorwoman" resulted in it joining the small list of programs canceled after one episode, finishing 88th for the week among all programs broadcast on the five major English-language networks and Univision with 2.66 million viewers.
What NBC said would be its final broadcast of the Miss Teen USA Pageant drew a record-low 4.32 million viewers Friday, 20% less than the previous low of 5.34 million for the 2004 pageant.
With Elizabeth Vargas substituting for Charles Gibson all week, ABC's "World News" was first among the network nightly newscasts for the 17th time in the last 18 weeks, averaging 8.08 million viewers, 11% more than the corresponding week a year ago.
"NBC Nightly News" was second with 7.93 million.
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Here are the rankings for national prime-time network television last week (Aug. 20-26) as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are 286 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions.
