By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --“Empire” came back to the Fox lineup with a flourish, while NBC’s thriller “Blindspot” looks to be one of the season’s hottest new shows.
Meanwhile, reliable CBS continued atop the Nielsen company’s television rankings as a new broadcast season started, on the strength of old reliables like “The Big Bang Theory,” ‘’NCIS” and “60 Minutes,” with younger shows “Scorpion” and “Life in Pieces” also hitting Nielsen’s top 20.
A new season means new habits for viewers, or at least getting back into old ones. Among the top four networks, CBS held its own compared to the first week of last season while NBC, ABC and Fox all slipped. But Nielsen’s same day ratings only tell part of the story now; networks will get a truer measure of successes and failures when they can factor in time-delayed viewing.
There’s no need for second looks at “Empire,” which was seen by 16.2 million viewers upon its return. Even better for Fox, half of those viewers were in the 18-to-49-year-old age group that advertisers love, and no other scripted show had as many as 6 million viewers in that demographic.
NBC’s “Blindspot,” the heavily promoted series about a mystery woman found in Times Square with a world of tattoos, feels like a hit out of the box with 10.6 million viewers.
CBS averaged 10.9 million viewers for the week. NBC averaged 8.9 million, and won among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers demographic. ABC had 6.9 million, Fox had 4.2 million, Univision had 2.3 million, Telemundo had 1.5 million and the CW and ION Television averaged 1 million.
ESPN as the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.99 million viewers in prime time. The Disney Channel had 1.86 million, Fox News Channel had 1.72 million, USA had 1.59 million and Adult Swim had 1.29 million.
NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.3 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 7.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.5 million viewers.
Here are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Sept. 21-27. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: Denver at Detroit, NBC, 22.07 million.
2. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 18.2 million.
3. “NCIS,” CBS, 18.19 million.
4. NFL Football: Washington at N.Y. Giants, CBS, 16.88 million.
5. “Empire,” Fox, 16.18 million.
6. “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 15.62 million.
7. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 15.04 million.
8. “NFL Post-Game,” CBS, 13.03 million.
9. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 12.62 million.
10. NFL Football: N.Y. Jets at Indianapolis, ESPN, 12.48 million.
11. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 12.37 million.
12. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 12.35 million.
13. “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 12.22 million.
14. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 11.91 million.
15. “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 11.46 million.
16. “Life in Pieces,” CBS, 11.28 million.
17. “Scorpion,” CBS, 11.09 million.
18. “NFL Pregame Show,” CBS, 10.61 million.
19. “Blindspot,” NBC, 10.61 million.
20. “Scandal,” ABC, 10.25 million.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More