RATINGS PLUNGE FOR PRIMETIME TV

Not a whole lot of people were watching broadcast TV last week. Perhaps it had something to do with all the daylight hours during the week. (TV viewing traditionally drops off as the days grown longer.) Perhaps it had something to do with all the reruns. (Twelve of the twenty most-watched shows were repeats.) Perhaps it had something to do with the World Cup telecasts on ESPN. (The sports channel’s coverage of the games set ratings records.) Whatever it was, advertisers could not have been happy. CBS’s shows averaged just 5.3 million viewers; NBC’s, 4.4 million; ABC’s, 4.2 million; and Fox’s, 3 million. As is often the case during the regular season, CBS’s NCIS was the highest-rated show of the week among total adults. However, it attracted just 8.8 million viewers — about half what it pulls in during the regular season. Two Big Brother episodes headed the list of most-watched shows among 18-49 year-olds. A third episode of the reality series placed fourth, just behind NBC’s summer talent contest, America’s Got Talent. The rest of the top-ten list among the younger demo was dominated by episodes of Univision’s telenovela, Lo Que La Vida Me Robo. Meanwhile, ABC’s new singing competition Rising Star saw its ratings plummet, dropping 20 percent in its second week to 4.7 million. "People are tired of singing competitions," TV Media Insights’ Marc Berman told the New York Daily News. "Television executives don’t know when enough is enough and they keep trying to reinvent the wheel. … People are not interested or invested in any of these shows anymore, and at this point they need to let it go.," Berman said.