NEW YORK — The NBA Finals is off and running with its best ratings through two games since the Chicago Bulls' last championship in 1998. Now ABC has to hope the Cleveland Cavaliers can make it competitive.
The first two games, both won by the Golden State Warriors, averaged 19.2 million viewers, the Nielsen company said. The interest in championship series usually increase if they are evenly-matched, so if the Cavs can take a few games ABC would be in great shape.
Unfortunately for the network, the Warriors haven't lost in the playoffs yet.
NBC had a strong showing with the debut of Megyn Kelly's newsmagazine, "Sunday Night," featuring her interview with Vladimir Putin. It landed among the week's 10 most-watched TV shows and, although it lost to CBS' "60 Minutes" in the time slot, won among younger viewers.
Basketball led ABC, which averaged 6.8 million viewers, to a weekly victory in prime time. NBC had 5.2 million viewers, CBS had 4.4 million, Fox had 2.3 million, Univision had 1.5 million, ION television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 870,000 and the CW had 820,000.
Fox News Channel was the week's most popular cable network, averaging 2.21 million viewers in prime time. HGTV had 1.49 million, MSNBC had 1.32 million, USA had 1.27 million and TBS had 1.23 million.
ABC's "World News Tonight" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.5 million viewers. NBC's "Nightly News" was second with 7.1 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.7 million.
For the week of May 29-June 4, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NBA Finals: Cleveland vs. Golden State, Game 2, ABC, 19.69 million; NBA Finals: Cleveland vs. Golden State, Game 1, ABC, 18.7 million; "America's Got Talent," NBC 12.32 million; "World of Dance," NBC, 9.71 million; "Little Big Shots," NBC, 7.45 million; "NCIS," CBS, 7.35 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 6.79 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 6.73 million; "Bull," CBS, 6.51 million; "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly," NBC, 6.2 million.
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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.
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Online:
http://www.nielsen.com
David Bauder, The Associated Press
