SINATRA SOUND-ALIKE WINS AGT‘S $1-MILLION PRIZE

An average of 14 million viewers tuned in to NBC’s America’s Got Talent Wednesday night to see a 37-year-old car washer from Logan, WV take the $1 million prize as the winner of this season’s talent contest. Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., 37, who wowed audiences with performances directly from the Frank Sinatra songbook, is the sixth winner of the summertime series since it started in 2006. Ratings for the finale were down 11 percent from last year, but still hefty. NBC used the one-hour timeslot following the AGT telecast to preview two new series, Up All Night and Free Agents. The former show retained 71 percent of AGT‘s audience and kept NBC in first place, but the latter show lost 40 percent of Up All Night‘s viewers. Both shows are due to move to the 8:00 p.m. hour next week, where they will face the series debut (in America) of Simon Cowell’s The X Factor. Meanwhile CBS’s season finale of Big Brother captured 7.7 million viewers, flat with last season, while the season debut of Survivor: South Pacific drew 10.6 million viewers, off 11 percent from the launch of Survivor: Nicaragua a year ago.