'The Bachelorette' gives final rose to ABC, which saw best summertime ratings in 2 years

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Emily Maynard's big choice on "The Bachelorette" led ABC to one of its best summertime ratings in two years.

The single mom from Charlotte, N.C., gave her final rose to entrepreneur Jef Holm in the show's season finale on Sunday, selecting him over racecar driver Arie Luyendyk Jr. Nielsen said both the two-hour episode and the hourlong "After the Final Rose" interview special that followed drew nearly 9 million viewers. The Nielsen Co. said the second-to-last season episode on Monday also finished among the week's top 10 shows.

ABC narrowly beat Fox for first place among young viewers last week. Overall, it was the network's best week in the summer ratings in two years — except for weeks when ABC televised the NBA finals.

With its reruns and the start of a new edition of "Big Brother," CBS won among all viewers in the slow summertime week. CBS averaged 5.3 million viewers (3.5 rating, 6 share).

ABC averaged 4.9 million viewers (3.2, 6), NBC had 4.3 million (2.8, 5), Fox had 3.8 million (2.2, 4), ION Television had 1.1 million (0.8, 1) and the CW had 740,000 (0.5, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.7 million viewer average in prime time (1.8, 3). Telemundo had 1.4 million (0.8, 1), TeleFutura had 530,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 170,000 and Azteca 120,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.7 million viewers (5.3, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 7.3 million (4.9, 10), and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.7 million viewers (3.9, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 per cent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of July 16-22, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 10.17 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.99 million; "The Bachelorette" (Sunday), ABC, 8.86 million; "The Bachelorette After the Rose," ABC, 8.8 million; "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 7.61 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 7.46 million; "Two and a Half Men" (Thursday), CBS, 7.43 million; "NCIS," CBS, 7.2 million; "The Bachelorette" (Monday), ABC, 7.16 million; "Hell's Kitchen" (Monday), Fox, 6.333 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 and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

News from © The Associated Press, 2012