By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --On an unusually busy summer night of television, viewers turned out Sunday for game shows, “Game of Thrones” and a BET awards show stuffed with tributes to the late Prince.
HBO drew a record audience of 8.9 million for the sixth season finale of the fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” besting the 8.1 million for the previous season-ender, the Nielsen company said Tuesday.
That’s usually only a fraction of the number of people who catch an episode once DVR playbacks, reruns and HBO Go viewings are added in. Viewership more than doubles, and gets close to tripling, with time-shifting taken into account, according to the research firm Samba TV.
ABC may be growing as a family favorite by bunching remakes of classic game shows on Sunday. The first edition of its game night featured “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ‘’Celebrity Family Feud” and “Match Game,” and each program landed among Nielsen’s 10 most-watched programs of the week.
Viacom’s decision to televise Sunday’s BET Awards across 12 of its networks, including Nickelodeon and MTV, may have saved the program from an embarrassing ratings story. The show was seen on Sunday by 7.2 million viewers, with 4.5 million watching on BET. Last year, when it was shown on BET and its Centric offshoot, the viewership was 6.3 million, Nielsen said.
The BET event had its share of memorable moments, from multiple performances of Prince numbers to Justin Timberlake attracting some Twitter hate for saying on social media that he liked an attention-getting speech on black culture by actor Jesse Williams.
That attracted the notice of “senior black-skinned correspondent” Roy Wood Jr. on “The Daily Show,” who said Timberlake deserved credit.
“He was watching the BET Awards when every other white person was watching ‘Game of Thrones,’” Wood said.
CBS narrowly won the week in prime time, averaging 4.64 million viewers. NBC had 4.59 million viewers, ABC had 4.46 million, Univision had 3 million, Fox had 2.2 million, Telemundo had 1.4 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and the CW had 920,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, as it celebrated the news of having its best half-year ratings in its 20-year history. Fox News averaged 1.93 million viewers last week, the Disney Channel had 1.73 million, HGTV had 1.54 million, USA had 1.53 million and Discovery had 1.46 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts for the fifth time in the past six weeks. It averaged 7.8 million viewers to the 7.7 million for NBC’s “Nightly News” and 6.4 million for the “CBS Evening News.”
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for June 20-26. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 11.73 million.
2. “Game of Thrones,” HBO, 8.89 million.
3. “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 8.09 million.
4. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 7.98 million.
5. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.56 million.
6. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 7.21 million.
7. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 7.05 million.
8. “Match Game,” ABC, 6.64 million.
9. “NCIS,” CBS, 6.58 million.
10. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 6.54 million.
11. “Person of Interest,” CBS, 6.51 million.
12. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 6.2 million.
13. Copa America Soccer: Argentina vs Chile, Univision, 6.19 million.
14. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 6.09 million.
15. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 5.8 million.
16. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 5.67 million.
17. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 5.45 million.
18. U.S. Gymnastics Championship, NBC, 5.4 million.
19. “20/20,” ABC, 5.23 million.
20. “Life in Pieces,” CBS, 5.15 million.
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