By Andrew Dalton, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --A special airing of "Black Panther" in the wake of the death of star Chadwick Boseman was a bright spot for the broadcast networks in a ratings week otherwise utterly dominated by Fox News Channel's coverage of the Republican National Convention.
ABC's last-minute scheduling Sunday night of the Disney and Marvel film about the African superhero drew 6.27 million viewers two days after Boseman died of colon cancer at age 43.
An accompanying tribute to Boseman brought nearly 5 million viewers and was fifth among broadcast shows for the week, the Nielsen company said Tuesday.
But the week overall belonged to Fox News, which had nine of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 primetime shows.
At No. 1 was Thursday night's airing of the convention and the nomination acceptance speech of President Donald Trump, which drew 9 million viewers. Fox News' Tuesday night convention coverage was second with nearly 8 million.
And the channel's convention-connected airings of "Hannity" filled out the rest of the top five.
The RNC also gave major bumps to the nightly shows of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.
Fox News Channel was easily the most watched network, cable or broadcast, of the week with an average of 5.1 million viewers in primetime.
NBC was the most popular broadcast network, averaging 2.77 million viewers in primetime. ABC had 2.75 million, CBS had 2.4 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Univision had 1.2 million Fox had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million.
Among other cable networks, MSNBC was second with 1.5 million average viewers, CNN had 1.47 million, HGTV had 1.4 million and TLC had 1.2 million.
ABC's "World News Tonight" led the network evening news ratings race, averaging 8.7 million viewers. NBC's "Nightly News" had 7.2 million, and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.2 million.
For the week of Aug. 24-30, the top 20 programs, their networks and viewerships:
1. "Republican National Convention" (Thursday), Fox News, 9 million.
2. "Republican National Convention" (Tuesday), Fox News, 7.9 million.
3. "Hannity" (Thursday), Fox News, 7.8 million.
4. "Hannity" (Tuesday), Fox News, 7.7 million.
5. "Hannity" (Wednesday), Fox News, 7.1 million.
6. "Republican National Convention" (Monday), Fox News, 7 million.
7. "Republican National Convention" (Wednesday), Fox News, 6.9 million.
8. "Hannity" (Monday), Fox News, 6.85 million.
9. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Thursday), Fox News, 6.28 million.
10. "Black Panther," ABC, 6.27 million.
11. "60 Minutes Presents," CBS, 6.2 million.
12. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Tuesday), Fox News, 6.1 million.
13. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Wednesday), Fox News, 5.9 million.
14. "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (Monday), Fox News, 5.7 million.
15. "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday) NBC, 5.6 million.
16. "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday) NBC, 5 million.
17. "Chadwick Boseman Tribute," ABC, 4.9 million.
18. "The Ingraham Angle" (Monday), Fox News, 4.8 million.
19. "The Ingraham Angle" (Tuesday), Fox News, 4.6 million.
20. "NCIS," CBS, million. 4.5 million.
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