Viewers tune in to ‘Talent,’ ‘60 Minutes,’ NBA games

For the second time in the two full weeks of the summer season, “America’s Got Talent” was prime time’s highest-rated television program and “60 Minutes” finished second.

The second episode of the 16th season of the NBC talent show averaged 7.22 million viewers, 2.1% less than its 7.372-million average for its season premiere a week earlier, according to live-plus-same-day figures released today by Nielsen.

The CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” was the only other prime-time program aired between June 7 and Sunday to average more than 5 million viewers, averaging 6.511 million viewers for an edition with repeats of three previously broadcast segments that were updated for Sunday’s broadcast. Viewership was down 7.8% from the 7.064-millon average the previous week.

The top-ranked prime-time sporting event was TNT’s coverage of the Phoenix Suns’ 125-118 victory over the Denver Nuggets Sunday to complete a four-game sweep of their NBA Western Conference semifinal series. The game, which also topped the cable rankings, averaged 4.216 million viewers, fourth overall.

The third-season finale of the NBC medical drama “New Amsterdam” was the highest-rated scripted program, averaging 4.096 million viewers, sixth overall.

The combination of “Celebrity Family Feud,” a Clippers playoff game and the season finale of “The Good Doctor” help ABC win the network ratings race, averaging 3.06 million viewers. CBS was second, averaging 2.93 million, followed by NBC, which averaged 2.72 million.

Fox was fourth among English-language broadcast networks, averaging 2 million viewers.

The CW again was fifth among the five major English-language broadcast networks, averaging 510,000 viewers.

“Celebrity Family Feud” was ABC’s biggest draw for the second consecutive week, averaging 4.836 million viewers, third for the week.

ABC’s coverage of the Clippers’ 132-106 victory over the Utah Jazz in Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal series averaged 4.112 million viewers, fifth for the week and most among Saturday’s prime-time programs.

“The Good Doctor” was ninth for the week, averaging 3.994 million, first among prime-time programs airing June 7.

Fox’s largest audience was for the cooking competition “Hell’s Kitchen,” 56th for the week, averaging 2.554 million viewers.

The CW’s top-ranked show was the crime drama “Walker,” which averaged 1.028 million viewers, tying for 108th among broadcast programs. Its overall rank was not available.

TNT’s NBA playoff coverage helped keep it at the top of the cable network rankings for the third consecutive week, averaging 2.132 million viewers. Fox News Channel was second for the third consecutive week following eight consecutive first-place finishes, averaging 2.115 million viewers. ESPN was third, averaging 2.096 million viewers.

The top 20 cable programs consisted of eight Fox News Channel political talk shows — five broadcasts of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and three of “Hannity” — six NBA playoff games on TNT, four NBA playoff games on ESPN, the NASCAR All-Star Race on FS1 and the Thursday broadcast of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

The canceled Netflix superhero series “Jupiter’s Legacy” topped the weekly list of programs on the four streaming services whose viewership figures are announced by Nielsen.

Viewers spent 1.019 billion minutes watching the eight episodes of “Jupiter’s Legacy” from May 10-16, its first full week of release. Viewership was up 46.4% from the 696 million minutes watched the previous week, when it was in the first three days of release.

“StartUp” was second for the week, with viewers watching 760 million minutes of the 31 episodes of the drama about an attempt to launder stolen money by financing a cryptocurrency that puts entrepreneurs in business with a corrupt FBI agent and a Miami gang.

Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ programming and the figures reflect only television set-related viewing, including such television-connected devices as Roku and Apple TV. Mobile-only viewing is not included in Nielsen’s streaming measurement systems.