This America’s Got Talent contestant goes by — I’m not kidding here — Cat Williams.
Photo by Trae Patton/NBC
The World Cup is over, and college football and the NFL won’t really get busy until early September. In TV terms, that means we’re entering the dog days of summer, particularly on broadcast and cable networks.
Thanks to several big sports events, every week since Memorial Day has had at least one primetime show average more than 8 million viewers — until last week. The top primetime show for July 20-26 was America’s Got Talent at 5.18 million viewers, a big comedown after an early summer fueled by huge NBA Finals and World Cup ratings.
That’s probably how it will be for the next month and change. Prepare to see a lot of evening newscasts at the top of the full-day charts and The Price Is Right and the occasional Fox News show in the top 20 there. I’ll still give you the charts each week, but maybe with a little less commentary. It is what it is, and we’ll get some more variety again when the traditional season starts up again in the fall.
A few news items from earlier this week before the charts:
• CBS and ABC set their fall premiere dates, and there’s a slight schedule change at ABC: Celebrity Jeopardy!, which had been scheduled for Wednesdays in the fall, is moving back to a 2027 premiere. A continuation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s current season will take the fall spot.
• Michael J. Fox will receive the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at this year’s Emmys. Very much deserved (and he’s nominated as a guest actor for Shrinking too).
• 60 Minutes added some new correspondents and contributors — New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger and Vice News alum and documentary maker Gianna Toboni — after the spring’s correspondent exodus/purge.
The top network and cable shows for last week are below, along with the top 10 sports telecasts of the week. Streaming ratings will come in a separate newsletter tomorrow evening.