’60 Minutes’ leads quiet week in Nielsen ratings

NEW YORK — Led by the reliable “60 Minutes” on CBS, news programming dominated the television rankings on a quiet week in mid-August.

Nine of the 20 most popular programs were news or commentary shows, eight of them on Fox News Channel, the Nielsen company said.

CBS was the most popular broadcast network in prime time, averaging 3.2 million viewers. NBC had 2.8 million, ABC had 2.4 million, Fox had 1.5 million, Univision had 1.3 million, ION Television had 1.2 million and Telemundo had 1 million.

Fox News Channel led the cable networks with an average of 3.29 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 2.04 million, HGTV had 1.4 million, CNN had 1.34 million and TLC had 1.3 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.5 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 7.3 million, and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.3 million.

For the week of Aug. 10-16, the top 20 programs, their networks and viewerships:

1. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7 million.

2. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.75 million.

3. “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 6.15 million.

4. “NCIS,” CBS, 4.73 million.

5. “Hannity” (Tuesday), Fox News, 4.59 million.

6. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Monday), Fox News, 4.55 million.

7. “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 4.45 million.

8. “Hannity” (Monday), Fox News, 4.39 million.

9. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Thursday), 4.28 million.

10. “Hannity” (Thursday), 4.22 million.

11. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Wednesday), 4.15 million.