By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --
It's no secret, sports fans. Better games produce better ratings.
That was the simple lesson for the NFL this week, after a dip in viewership for its conference championship games, compared to 2019. The Nielsen company said 42.8 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers to punch their Super Bowl ticket, and 41.1 million people watched Kansas City beat Tennessee.
Both conference championship games went into overtime last year, and the audiences were 44.2 million and 53.9 million, Nielsen said. By contrast, this year's games were one-sided.
LSU's win over Clemson in the college football national championship game was seen by 25.6 million on ESPN, Nielsen said. That's a little over a million more than last year's game reached.
With the benefit of an NFL game in primetime, Fox led all the broadcast networks in ratings last week, averaging 9.9 million viewers. CBS had 4.9 million viewers in primetime, NBC had 4.2 million, ABC had 3.8 million, Univision had 1.6 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 890,000 and the CW had 790,000.
ESPN led the cable networks, averaging 4.28 million viewers in primetime. Fox News Channel averaged 2.75 million, MSNBC had 1.86 million, CNN had 1.46 million and TLC had 1.18 million.
ABC's "World News Tonight" led the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.3 million viewers last week. NBC's "Nightly News" had 8.1 million viewers and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.9 million viewers.
The top 20 programs as measured by Nielsen last week, their network and viewership:
1. NFC Championship: Green Bay at San Francisco, Fox, 42.79 million.
2. "NFL Post-Game" (9:44 to 9:49 p.m. Eastern), Fox, 31.29 million.
3. College Football Championship: Clemson vs. LSU, ESPN, 25.58 million.
4. "NFL Post-Game" (9:50 to 10:04 p.m. Eastern), Fox, 23.92 million.
5. "College Football Post-Game," ESPN, 16.7 million.
6. "Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time, Match 4," ABC, 13.55 million.
7. "911: Lone Star," Fox, 11.41 million.
8. "NCIS," CBS, 10.13 million.
9. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 8.88 million.
10. "FBI," CBS, 8.57 million
11. "Chicago Med," NBC, 8.45 million.
12. "Chicago Fire," NBC, 8.17 million.
13. "60 Minutes," CBS, 8.1 million.
14. "Democratic Debate," CNN, 7.4 million.
15. "Chicago PD," NBC, 6.78 million.
16. "This is Us," NBC, 6.73 million.
17. "America's Got Talent Champions," NBC, 6.53 million.
18. "FBI: Most Wanted," CBS, 6.52 million.
19. "Mom," CBS, 6.3 million.
20. "Democratic Debate Analysis," CNN, 5.77 million.
Tags:NFLNielsen
Sunday, August 18, 2024
French actor Alain Delon takes a short walk away from the set of a new film, "The Sicilians," during a break in the shooting in the center of Rome, on March 27, 1969. Alain Delon, the internationally acclaimed French actor who embodied both the bad guy and the policeman and made hearts throb around the world, has died at age 88, French media reported. (AP Photo/Jim Pringle, File)
Alain Delon, the internationally acclaimed French actor who embodied both the bad guy and the policeman and made hearts throb around the world, died at age 88, French media reported.
With his handsome looks and tender manner, the prolific actor was able to combine toughness with an appealing, vulnerable quality that made him one of France's memorable leading men.
Delon was also a producer, appeared in plays and, in later years, in television movies.
French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on X to "a French monument."
"Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream," he wrote. "Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star."
Delon's children announced the death on Sunday in a statement to French national news agency Agence France-Presse, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon immediately started pouring in on social platforms, and all leading French media switched to full-fledged coverage of his rich career.
Earlier this year, his son Anthony had said his father had been been diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Over the past year, Delon's fragile health condition had been at the heart of a family dispute over his care that gave rise to bitter exchanges through the media among his three children.
At the prime of his career, in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was sought out by some of the world's top directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losey.
In his later years, Delon grew disillusioned with the movie industry, saying that money had killed the dream. "Money, commerce and television have wrecked the dream machine," he wrote in a 2003 edition of newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur. "My cinema is dead. And me, too."
But he continued to work... Read More
