By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Football and other forms of televised competition — the season finales of some popular reality shows — dominated the Nielsen company's weekly list of the most popular shows on television.
Four separate NFL games were on Nielsen's list of the most popular programs in primetime. As is typical, NBC's Sunday night game, most recently featuring New Orleans' surprise shutout of the Tampa Bay Bucs, topped the list.
NBC's "The Voice," CBS' "Survivor" and Fox's "The Masked Singer" all crowned winners this past week and had fans tuning in. "The Voice," with 7.3 million viewers for the first of two parts on Monday, had the highest numbers.One television staple, ABC's showing of "The Sound of Music" movie, reached 3.3 million people on Sunday night, Nielsen said.
Fox won the week in primetime among broadcast networks, averaging 5.7 million viewers last week. NBC had 5.1 million, CBS had 3.8 million, ABC had 3.5 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Ion Television had 1 million and Telemundo had 910,000.
Fox News Channel won among the cable networks, averaging 2.2 million in primetime. ESPN had 1.89 million, Hallmark had 1.48 million, MSNBC had 1.3 million and Paramount had 1.07 million.
ABC's "World News Tonight" won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.2 million viewers. NBC's "Nightly News" had 7.5 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.1 million.
For the week of Dec. 13-19, the 20 most popular shows, their networks and viewerships:
1. NFL Football: New Orleans at Tampa Bay, NBC, 18.06 million.
2. NFL Football: Kansas City at L.A. Chargers, Fox, 17.86 million.
3. "NFL Pregame," NBC, 12.17 million.
4. "The OT," Fox, 11.18 million.
5. "NFL Pregame," Fox, 9.26 million.
6. "Football Night in America, Part 3," NBC, 8.92 million.
7. "FBI," CBS, 8.31 million.
8. NFL Football: L.A. Rams at Arizona, ABC, 7.97 million.
9. "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.94 million.
10. NFL Football: L.A. Rams at Arizona, ESPN, 7.93 million.
11. "Yellowstone," Paramount, 7.74 million.
12. "The Voice" (Monday), NBC, 7.28 million.
13. NFL Football: New England at Indianapolis, NFL Network, 7.26 million.
14. "The Voice" (Tuesday), NBC, 6.98 million.
15. "FBI: Most Wanted," CBS, 6.86 million.
16. "Survivor," CBS, 5.61 million.
17. "The Masked Singer," Fox, 5.08 million.
18. "1883," Paramount, 4.98 million.
19. "NFL Pregame," ABC, 4.74 million.
20. "Football Night in America, Part 2," NBC, 4.73 million.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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