By Andrew Dalton, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --In its last blast, “The Big Bang Theory” topped the TV ratings by a light-year.
The back-to-back, two-episode finale of the nerdy CBS comedy’s 12-season run drew 18.5 million live viewers Thursday night to easily win the week, the Nielsen company said Tuesday.
Sunday night’s much-ballyhooed finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” was a distant second with 13.61 million live viewers.
“Game of Thrones,” however, had a comparable 18.4 million viewers when HBO’s same-night reruns and streaming services are included, making it the most-watched episode of any kind in the history of the cable channel.
Despite mixed fan reaction to the eighth and final “Thrones” season , it was a ratings winner throughout, competing with and usually beating shows that appear in three times more homes. The viewer numbers also grew as the season progressed, with the season premiere setting a record that was topped by three subsequent episodes.
“Big Bang” was a colossal ratings winner that helped keep CBS the top network for much of its record run of 279 episodes, the most ever for a multi-camera series.
Thursday night’s hour-long finale saw the show’s group of geeky misfits take one last trip together to support married couple Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) after they won the Nobel Prize in physics.
A prequel spinoff, “Young Sheldon,” is pulling similar numbers in its second season and will extend the life of the franchise. It finished third in last week’s ratings in a timeslot just after the finale.
“Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell,” a special that aired later the same night, was fourth.
That two-hour “Big Bang” block helped give CBS six of the top 10 shows and an easy win of the week in primetime with an average of 6.5 million viewers. NBC averaged 4.5 million, ABC 3.8 million, Fox 1.9 million, Univision with 1.25 million, ION Television with 1.2 million, Telemundo 1.1 million and the CW 790,000.
ESPN and TNT rode the NBA playoffs to the top two spots among cable networks. ESPN averaged 2.7 million nightly viewers, TNT 2.6 million. Fox News Channel was third with an average of 2.3 million viewers, MSNBC averaged 1.4 million and HGTV averaged 1.1 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 7.1 million and the “CBS Evening News” averaged 5.4 million viewers.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for May 13-19. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 18.5 million.
2. “Game of Thrones,” HBO, 13.61 million.
3. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 13.6 million.
4. “NCIS,” CBS, 11.7 million.
5. “Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell,” CBS, 11.6 million.
6. “American Idol” (Sunday), ABC, 8.7 million.
7. “FBI,” CBS, 8.6 million.
8. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 8.4 million.
9. NBA Playoffs-Conference Finals, Portland at Golden State (Thursday), ESPN, 8 million.
10. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 7.98 million.
11. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 7.96 million.
12. “The Voice,” NBC, 7.7 million.
13. NBA Playoffs-Conference Finals, Portland at Golden State (Tuesday), ESPN, 7.5 million.
14. NBA Playoffs-Conference Finals, Portland at Golden State (Saturday), ESPN, 7.24 million.
15. “Survivor,” CBS, 7.21 million.
16. “Bull,” CBS, 7.2 million.
17. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 6.9 million.
18. “Chicago PD,” 6.7 million.
19. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.6 million.
20. “9-1-1,” Fox, 6.4 million.
ABC and ESPN are 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; Turner is owned by WarnerMedia.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More