NEW YORK -- In an otherwise quiet week for television, President Joe Biden was the biggest star.
An estimated 38.2 million people watched him deliver his first State of the Union speech last week, spread across several networks that carried it. Fox News Channel, where 7.2 million people watched, had the biggest single audience, the Nielsen company said.
Otherwise, no prime-time program exceeded 8 million live viewers. On a typical night, ABC's “World News Tonight” with David Muir had a bigger audience than anything else on TV last week.
Among individual prime-time shows, “60 Minutes” finished on top for the second week in a row, Nielsen said.
CBS won the week in prime time with an average of 4.6 million viewers. ABC had 3.9 million, NBC had 3.2 million, Fox had 1.9 million, Univision had 1.4 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 930,000.
Fox News Channel led the cable networks in prime time with an average of 3.51 million viewers. CNN had 1.81 million, MSNBC had 1.64 million, ESPN had 1.29 million and HGTV had 1.1 million.
ABC's “World News Tonight” won the evening news ratings race with an average of 8.8 million viewers, NBC's “Nightly News” had 7.3 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.1 million.
For the week of Feb. 28-March 6, the 20 most-watched programs in prime time, their networks and viewerships:
1. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.99 million.
2. “State of the Union,” Fox News, 7.21 million.
3. “The Equalizer,” CBS, 7.13 million.
4. “NCIS,” CBS, 7.12 million.
5. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 7.05 million.
6. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 6.89 million.
7. “State of the Union Preview,” Fox News, 6.62 million.
8. “American Idol,” ABC, 6.57 million.
9. “State of the Union Analysis" (10:10-10:32 p.m. Eastern), Fox News, 6.55 million.
10. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 6.48 million.
11. “State of the Union,” ABC, 6.3 million.
12. “State of the Union: Republican Response,” Fox News, 5.98 million.
13. “America's Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 5.91 million.
14. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 5.9 million.
15. “Chicago PD,” NBC, 5.81 million.
16. “The Neighborhood,” CBS, 5.7 million.
17. “Ghosts,” CBS, 5.52 million.
18. “Bob Hearts Abishola,” CBS, 5.5 million.
19. “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 5.45 million.
20. “State of the Union Analysis” (10:46-11 p.m. Eastern), Fox News, 5.44 million.
