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.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More