Know an easy way to tell that fall is here? Simple: Look at broadcast TV ratings, currently dominated by football telecasts. For the week ending Sept. 13, NBC scored a ratings touchdown, as both its Sunday and Thursday night airings of NFL games took the No. 1 and 2 spots with 21.1 million and 20.9 million viewers, respectively. We’ll see in the coming weeks if any of TV’s top scripted and competition shows — like CBS’ The Mentalist and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars — can top the sports airings when they return to airing new episodes.
Beyond football, however, NBC still managed to make a splash in the Top 20, with America’s Got Talent, which is winding down to its finale tomorrow night. The show’s Tuesday airing appearing at No. 3 with 12 million and its Wednesday airing landing at No. 6 with 10.1 million. Squeezed in between AGT was CBS’s 60 Minutes, which popped up at No. 5 with 10.5 million viewers, and a repeat of CBS’s NCIS.
Talent, however, wasn’t the only singing and dancing show to top the ratings chart: The series premiere of Fox’s much-promoted Glee attracted 7.5 million viewers, good enough to land it at No. 13; and the fifth season premiere of the network’s So You Think You Can Dance — debuting for the first time in the fall — was watched by 6.6 million viewers to put it at No. 19. Beyond that, though, the week’s rating were rather unexciting, highlighted by Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen (8 million viewers at No. 10); three episodes of CBS’s Big Brother (which ends with a two-hour season finale tonight); and a double dose of NBC’s Dateline. Plus, of course, a bevy of repeats, courtesy of CBS.
The full weekly ratings are after the jump.
1. NFL Sunday Night Football | NBC | 21.1 million
2. NFL Thursday Special | NBC | 20.9 million
3. America’s Got Talent Tuesday | NBC | 12.0 million
4. NCIS (R) | CBS | 11.2 million
5. 60 Minutes | CBS | 10.5 million
6. America’s Got Talent Wednesday | CBS | 10.1 million
7. Two and a Half Men (R) | CBS | 9.0 million
8. The Mentalist (R) | CBS | 8.3 million
9. The Big Bang Theory (R) | CBS | 8.1 million
10. Hell’s Kitchen | Fox | 8.0 million
11. Big Brother Tuesday | CBS | 7.9 million
12. CSI (R) | CBS | 7.6 million
13. Glee | Fox | 7.5 million
14. Big Brother Thursday | CBS | 7.4 million
15. Dateline Friday | NBC | 7.4 million
16. Dateline Monday | NBC | 6.7 million
17. Big Brother Sunday | CBS | 6.6 million
18. The Mentalist (R) | CBS | 6.6 million
19. So You Think You Can Dance | Fox | 6.6 million
20. America’s Got Talent (R) | NBC | 6.5 million
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