By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --With someone walking onstage every few minutes to read a name off a piece of paper, the NFL draft wouldn’t seem like a big television draw. Yet the 11.2 million people who watched this year made it the week’s second most popular program.
The first round of the draft was shown on Fox, the NFL Network and several ESPN networks simultaneously. This year’s assignment of college football players to NFL teams was particularly suspenseful, with a handful of quality quarterbacks waiting to be drafted, and little consensus ahead of time over how things were going to go.
Still, it wasn’t quite as popular as the most-watched draft ever. That came in 2014 when another quarterback, in this case Johnny Manziel, was selected first by the Cleveland Browns. That draft reached 12.4 million people on Thursday, the Nielsen company said.
Coverage of the third day of the draft, when the players really start getting obscure, reached nearly 3 million and was the most ever, Nielsen said.
With ABC’s “Roseanne” in repeats, CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” returned to the top of the ratings, reaching 11.8 million people.
CBS won the week in primetime, averaging 6.4 million viewers. ABC had 4.5 million, NBC had 4.4 million, Fox had 2.7 million, Univision had 1.6 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million and the CW had 1.1 million.
TNT was the most popular cable network, averaging 2.74 million viewers in primetime. Fox News Channel had 2.35 million, ESPN had 1.86 million, MSNBC had 1.75 million and USA had 1.45 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.3 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 7.7 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.9 million.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for April 23-29. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. “The Big Bang Theory” (Thursday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 11.8 million.
2. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 11.16 million.
3. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 9.26 million.
4. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 9.16 million.
5. “American Idol” (Sunday), ABC, 8.77 million.
6. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 8.43 million.
7. “Mom,” CBS, 8.31 million.
8. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 8.13 million.
9. “Survivor,” CBS, 7.82 million.
10. “Hawaii Five-0,” CBS, 7.79 million.
11. “American Idol” (Monday), ABC, 7.63 million.
12. “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 7.62 million.
13. “Instinct,” CBS, 7 million.
14. “NCIS” (Thursday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 6.98 million.
15. “NCIS” (Thursday, 9 p.m.), CBS, 6.69 million.
16. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 6.55 million.
17. “Roseanne” (Thursday, 9 p.m.), ABC, 6.51 million.
18. “The Big Bang Theory” (Monday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 6.38 million.
19. “Roseanne” (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.), ABC, 6.381 million.
20. “Roseanne” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), ABC, 6.378 million.
ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.; CBS is a division of CBS Corp.; Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox; NBC is owned by NBC Universal.
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More