Cable Highlights: In the morning’s overnight ratings, last night’s ESPY AWARDS on ESPN rose a healthy 0.3 from last year to a 1.9 household rating, giving host Jon Hamm a nice lead-in to this morning’s Emmy nomination for Best Drama Actor. But while last year the awards finished with a 1.2 adult 18-49 rating, this year’s ESPYs fell to 1.0 in the official nationals, only able to tie the season premiere of HERE COMES HONEY BOO BOO.
The news was worse at FX, where THE BRIDGE pretty much collapsed, losing almost half of its 18-49 audience for a very mediocre 0.5. The show dropped a similar proportion of its older viewers, as the total viewers number fell by 1.3M to 1.7M. Given the show’s complicated plot and serialized nature, it’s going to be awfully difficult to recapture those eyeballs.
USA was more successful, as ROYAL PAINS rose in 18-49s (by 0.1 to 0.9) and total viewers (by 250K to 3.8M), while NECESSARY ROUGHNESS gained half a million viewers (to 2.6M) and held even at 0.6 in 18-49s. The latter was probably helped by viewers who had tried The Bridge and decided it wasn’t their cup of tea.
At TNT, FRANKLIN & BASH fell a bit in total viewers (by 200K to 2M) but was even at 0.6 in the demo.
NBC: AMERICA’S GOT TALENT was the highest rated show of the night and gave NBC the win, steady with last week’s 2.8 adult 18-49 rating. The 8PM hour was a clip show at 1.8. CAMP held up well enough at 10PM, down just 0.1 from last week’s debut to 1.4.
CBS: BIG BROTHER was up slightly from last week to 2.1, followed by reruns at 1.1/1.3.
FOX: The new 9PM hour of MASTERCHEF fell 0.2 from last week to 2.1. It was preceded by a 1.1 rerun.
ABC: A new episode of THE LOOKOUT tied a rerun MODERN FAMILY at 0.8, the best the network could do for the night.
CW: Reruns at 0.2/0.3.
All the networks air their usual summer line-ups tonight, with at least one fresh hour on each.
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