By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Baseball’s All-Star game is fading as a midsummer television attraction, but the adjunct Home Run Derby is becoming popular in its own right.
The Nielsen company says a little more than 8 million people watched Tuesday’s All-Star game on Fox, enough to be the second-most popular thing on television after “America’s Got Talent” last week. The derby where sluggers flex their muscles a day before the game was televised on ESPN and reached 5.4 million viewers.
New York Mets rookie Pete Alonso won the Home Run Derby. The American League took the All-Star game.
The four major broadcast networks all struggled to find viewers during a quiet July week. CBS was in the unusual position of fourth place, although summer ratings don’t mean much to the networks.
NBC won the week in primetime, averaging 3.6 million viewers. ABC had 3.2 million, Fox had 3.1 million, CBS had 3 million, ION Television had 1.5 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million, Univision had 1.1 million and the CW had 660,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.28 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.54 million, ESPN had 1.47 million, HGTV had 1.27 million and TLC had 1.15 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8 million viewers, NBC’s Nightly News” had 6.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for July 8-14. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, 9.81 million.
2. MLB All-Star Game, Fox, 8.15 million.
3. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.35 million.
4. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 6.05 million.
5. “Bring the Funny,” NBC, 5.97 million.
6. “Home Run Derby,” ESPN, 5.41 million.
7. “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 5.044 million.
8. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 5.041 million.
9. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 4.5 million.
10. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 4.2 million.
11. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 4.16 million.
12. “To Tell the Truth,” ABC, 4.058 million.
13. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 4.055 million.
14. “Holey Moley,” ABC, 3.96 million.
15. “ESPY Awards,” ABC, 3.87 million.
16. “The Code,” CBS, 3.85 million.
17. “Bull,” CBS, 3.84 million.
18. “Dateline NBC,” NBC, 3.76 million.
19. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 3.739 million.
20. “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 3.738 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.
More Than A Game: Bringing Sincere Representation Of The Shawnee Tribe To Civilization 7
Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes grew up playing video games, including "probably hundreds of hours" colonizing a distant planet in the 1999 title Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
So when that same game studio, Firaxis, approached the tribal nation a quarter-century later with a proposal to make a playable character out of their famous leader Tecumseh in the upcoming game Civilization 7, Barnes felt a rush of excitement.
"I was like, 'This can't be true,'" Barnes said. "Do they want us to participate in the next version of Civilization?"
Beloved by tens of millions of gamers since its 1991 debut, Meier's Civilization series sparked a new genre of empire-building games that simulated the real world while also diverging into imaginary twists. It has captivated nerdy fans like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and a young Barnes with its intricate and addictive gameplay and rich historical context.
Choosing among leaders that can range from Cleopatra to Mahatma Gandhi, players build a civilization from its first settlement to a sprawling network of cities, negotiate with or conquer neighbors, and develop trade, science, religion and the arts. Circana, which tracks U.S. game sales, says it's the bestselling strategy video game franchise of all time.
But things have changed since the early days of Civilization. Of course, video game technology has advanced, but so too has society's understanding of cultural appropriation and the importance of accurate historical framing.
Firaxis dropped plans to add a historical Pueblo leader in 2010 after tribal leaders objected. The game incorporated a Cree leader in 2018 but faced public criticism in Canada after its release.
Developers knew that to properly represent the Shawnee leader, they would... Read More