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Drama Finale Wins Sunday Night in Broadcast Prime; NBC Miniseries Bows to Soft Numbers

May 12, 2014  •  Post A Comment

The season finale of a drama series, expanded to two hours, was the top show on the broadcast nets in Sunday prime for ABC, while an NBC miniseries opened to mediocre viewership, based on Nielsen overnights for the key 18-49 demo.

TVbytheNumbers.com reports that the expanded installment of "Once Upon a Time" helped lift ABC to a comfortable win over its broadcast competition on a Sunday night when the broadcast networks in general endured soft viewer numbers.

The "Once Upon a Time" finale delivered a 2.2 average in viewers 18-49 from 8-10 p.m., improving 5% on last week's number for the series. Also on ABC, the season finale of "Revenge" surged 15% to a 1.5 and "America's Funniest Home Videos" ticked down 6% to a 1.5.

CBS and Fox tied for second overall, well off the pace set by ABC in the 18-49 demo. CBS was led by "The Amazing Race" with a 1.7, equaling last week's demo number. CBS's "The Mentalist" matched last week's series low with a 1.2 average, while "60 Minutes" rose 10% to a 1.1 and "The Good Wife" climbed 9% to a 1.2.

Fox's strongest show was "Family Guy" with a 2.1 average in 18-49, off 5% from a week ago. The rest of the Fox lineup was also down: "Bob's Burgers" dipped 18% to a 0.9 average, "American Dad" was off 15% with a 1.1, "The Simpsons" lost 20% to deliver a 1.6 and "Cosmos" plummeted 25% to a 1.2.

NBC debuted its miniseries "Rosemary's Baby" with a two-hour premiere from 9-11 p.m., claiming a 1.1 average in 18-49 that improved 10% on the time slot average from a week ago, when the network aired "Crisis" and "Believe." A two-hour "Dateline" opened NBC's prime-time slate, falling 27% from last week to settle for a 0.8.

The report notes that NBC carried overrun from The Players Championship golf tournament to start prime time, meaning the network's numbers will be subject to more than the usual adjustments.

For prime time overall, ABC led all broadcast nets Sunday night with a 1.8 average in viewers 18-49, followed by Fox and CBS (both with 1.3 averages), NBC (0.9) and Univision (0.7). CBS came out with a comfortable lead in total viewers, averaging 8.3 million to top ABC (5.9 million), NBC (3.7 million), Fox (3.2 million) and Univision (2.0 million).

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