By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --It’s not just the city of Cleveland that’s happy with LeBron James and his comeback Cavaliers.
The seven-game series with the Golden State Warriors was the most-watched NBA Finals since 1998, the year Michael Jordan won the last of his six titles, the Nielsen company said Tuesday. Game 7 on Sunday, seen by 31 million viewers, was the most popular individual Finals game since Jordan’s clincher – with 10 million more people watching than during any other playoff game this year.
It was a winner-take-all game for the NBA championship involving the league’s two best players, and it went down to the last minute.
“I’m sure (ABC) wishes they were able to foresee that and price their ads accordingly,” said Jon Swallen, chief research officer for Kantar Media.
The series as a whole averaged 20.2 million viewers, Nielsen said. No NBA Finals that didn’t involve Jordan has scored as high since 1989. The last time Cleveland was in the Finals, in 2007, the series averaged 9.3 million viewers.
Kantar Media estimates that ABC earned $295 million in advertising revenue from the seven-game series, or about $120 million more than if it had been a four-game sweep. While ABC still would have earned advertising revenue for entertainment programming if there weren’t extra games, it wouldn’t have been that much more, Swallen said.
ABC sets ad rates before the playoffs begin, with prices escalating if the Finals go to six or seven games. But since the network couldn’t have predicted a finale that was the year’s most popular program after the Super Bowl and the Oscars, Sunday’s advertisers got a relative bargain, he said.
That includes ABC: an estimated 15 percent of Sunday’s ads were touting upcoming ABC shows, and exposure before 31 million people can significantly boost awareness of the network’s upcoming shows, he said.
The NBA series also boosted ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who records a show to air before each night’s game in the East, and after the game out West. Thursday’s episode, with Oprah Winfrey, drew an all-time best 4.8 million viewers for a Kimmel show.
For the week, the games helped ABC to an average of 10.5 million viewers in prime time. CBS and NBC were tied for second with 4.57 million viewers, Fox had 3.1 million, Univision had 2.6 million, Telemundo had 1.4 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and the CW had 900,000.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.04 million viewers in prime time. HGTV had 1.56 million, TBS had 1.42 million, USA had 1.31 million and Disney had 1.3 million.
NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.9 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 7.8 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.5 million viewers.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for June 13-19. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. NBA Finals Game 7: Cleveland at Golden State, ABC, 31.02 million viewers.
2. “NBA Trophy Presentation,” ABC, 27.77 million.
3. NBA Finals, Game 6: Golden State at Cleveland, ABC, 20.7 million.
4. NBA Finals, Game 5, Cleveland at Golden State, ABC, 20.54 million.
5. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 11.54 million.
6. “Game of Thrones,” HBO, 7.66 million.
7. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 6.91 million.
8. “NCIS,” CBS, 6.88 million.
9. “American Ninja Warrior,” NBC, 6.84 million.
10. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 6.726 million.
11. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.725 million.
12. “NBA Countdown: Game 6,” ABC, 6.39 million.
13. “Person of Interest,” CBS, 6.27 million.
14. “NBA Countdown: Game 7,” ABC, 6.1 million.
15. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 5.89 million.
16. “NBA Countdown: Game 5,” ABC, 5.65 million.
17. Copa America Soccer: Mexico vs. Chile, Univision, 5.41 million.
18. “To Tell the Truth” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), ABC, 5.22 million.
19. “To Tell the Truth” (Tuesday, 8 p.m., ABC, 5.21 million.
20. “Hawaii Five-0,” CBS, 5.19 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