‘Chicago’ dramas do big business for NBC

NEW YORK — Producer Dick Wolf’s factory of “Chicago” dramas is becoming increasingly important for NBC.

Both “Chicago PD” and “Chicago Fire” scored their highest ratings in nearly two years last week with crossover episodes where they shared casts, the Nielsen company said. “Chicago Med” actually had the biggest audience of the triumvirate with 9.1 million viewers, although the other two were close behind.

All three shows were among the 11 most-watched programs on prime-time television last week. After the finale of “America’s Got Talent Champions” last week, they were the most popular programs on NBC.

The Oscars led ABC to a weekly win in the ratings. The show’s audience of 29.6 million was up 12 per cent over last year’s show, but it still finished as the second least-watched Oscars telecast ever.

ABC averaged 8 million viewers for the week. CBS was second with 6.2 million, NBC had 5 million, Fox had 3 million, Univision had 1.5 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1.1 million and the CW had 610,000.

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Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.39 million viewers. MSNBC had 1.88 million, ESPN had 1.33 million, HGTV had 1.32 million and USA had 1.23 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the evening newscasts with an average of 9.5 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 8.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.6 million.

For the week of Feb. 18-24, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “The Oscars,” ABC, 29.56 million; “Live From the Red Carpet” (7:30-8 p.m. ET), ABC, 14.16 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 13.49 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 12.75 million; “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 11.31 million; “America’s Got Talent Champions,” NBC, 10.58 million; “Live From the Red Carpet” (7-7:29 p.m.), ABC, 10.42 million; “Chicago Med,” NBC, 9.12 million; “FBI,” CBS, 9.07 million; “Chicago PD,” NBC, 8.94 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