All-Star game wins yet loses, setting record low

Fox’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s All-Star game at Dodger Stadium July 19 averaged 7.507 million viewers, the most among prime-time non-news broadcast and cable programs airing between July 18 and Sunday, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.

Yet ratings for the American League’s 3-2 victory over the National League set a record low. The previous low was 8.162 million for the 2019 game. The 2021 game averaged 8.316 million viewers.

The audience for the game was the largest for any prime-time, non-news program since ABC’s coverage of the concluding game of the NBA finals on June 16 averaged 13.993 million viewers. It was the largest audience for a Fox program since Jan. 30, when its coverage of the NFC championship game averaged 50.225 million.

ESPN’s coverage of the Home Run Derby, also from Dodger Stadium, averaged 6.02 million viewers, finishing in second place on cable and fourth overall, behind the All-Star game, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which averaged 6.153 million, and an edition of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” with three previously broadcast segments that were updated for Sunday’s broadcast, which averaged 6.13 million viewers.

The top rated show for the week was Thursday’s prime-time hearing of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, averaging 17.667 million viewers across 10 networks. The committee’s previous prime-time hearing, June 9, averaged 20.043 million across 11 networks. MSNBC drew the largest audience for Thursday’s hearings, averaging 4.832 million viewers, fifth among the week’s prime-time programs.

In the network race ABC edged CBS, 2.75 million to 2.7 million, to win the network race for the fifth time in the eight full weeks of television’s summer season.

ABC’s top-rated show was “Celebrity Family Feud,” seventh for the week, averaging 4.214 million for an episode featuring the casts from Disney+’s “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” and the Netflix comedy “Never Have I Ever” and the families of Ron Funches and Meagan Good.

Fox finished third, averaging 2.58 million viewers. NBC was fourth, averaging 2.56 million viewers.

The CW averaged 370,000 viewers.

The week’s top 20 consisted of Fox’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s All-Star game; the Home Run Derby and its 23-minute “prelude” on ESPN; the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes”; NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”; two game shows and a rerun of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on ABC; segments of coverage of the Jan. 6 committee hearing on MSNBC; hearing coverage on ABC and CNN; reruns of three CBS scripted series; the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the CBS alternative series “Big Brother”; and three editions of the Fox News Channel political talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Fox News Channel won the cable network race in prime time for the seventh consecutive week, averaging 2.185 million viewers. MSNBC was second, averaging 1.624 million and ESPN third, averaging 1.19 million. Hallmark Channel was the only other cable network to average more than 1 million viewers in prime time, averaging 1.029 million.

Cable’s top 20 consisted of 14 Fox News Channel weeknight political talk shows — five broadcasts each of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” and four of “The Ingraham Angle”; the Home Run Derby and its 23-minute “prelude” on ESPN; coverage of the Jan. 6 committee hearing on MSNBC and CNN; and the July 18 edition of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

On Netflix, the fourth season of “Virgin River” was the most streamed program, with viewers spending 105.44 million hours watching the season’s 12 episodes of the romantic drama in their first five days of release, according to figures released by the streaming service Tuesday.

The nine-episode fourth season of “Stranger Things” was second with 74.99 million hours watched after finishing first for three consecutive weeks — and first for seven of the nine weeks that the season had been available.

“The Gray Man” was Netflix’s best performing movie, with viewers spending 88.55 million hours streaming the action thriller in its first three days of release. “The Sea Beast” was second with 34.14 million hours watched after finishing first the previous two weeks.