‘60 Minutes’ clocks in at No. 1 among prime-time shows; ‘Superman & Lois’ is tops on the CW

Despite drawing its smallest audience for an original episode since its season premiere, “60 Minutes” was the highest-rated prime-time program for the second week in a row, helping CBS to its sixth consecutive weekly victory.

The CBS News magazine averaged 8.127 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen.

For the sixth time in the six weeks since Fox’s final prime-time NFL telecast of the 2020 season, CBS had at least three of the top-rated programs.

The comedy “Young Sheldon” was second among prime-time broadcast and cable programs airing between Feb. 22 and Sunday, averaging a season-best 7.874 million viewers. “The Equalizer,” which followed “60 Minutes,” finished third, averaging 7.781 million viewers.

The week’s only premiere on the five major English-language broadcast networks, the superhero drama “Superman & Lois,” averaged 1.745 million viewers, 75th among broadcast programs and first among programming on the CW.

The Golden Globe Awards telecast was ranked fourth, averaging 6.913 million viewers, its smallest audience since returning to NBC in 1996.

CBS averaged 4.46 million viewers for a week with reruns of the season’s two most popular entertainment programs to have aired at least five episodes, “NCIS” and “FBI.” The order of finish behind CBS was the same as the previous four weeks. ABC was second, averaging 3.87 million viewers, and NBC third, averaging 3.35 million. Fox was fourth, averaging 2.28 million viewers for its 15 hours and 48 minutes of programming.

CBS, ABC and NBC each aired 22 hours of prime-time programming for the week.

The procedural drama “9-1-1” was Fox’s top-ranked show for the sixth consecutive week, averaging 6.739 million viewers, fifth for the week.

“American Idol” had ABC’s biggest audience for the third time in the three weeks it has aired this season, averaging 6.605 million viewers, sixth for the week.

For the fourth time in five weeks, an episode of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show” was the top-ranked prime-time cable program, with the Wednesday episode averaging 3.483 million viewers, 38th overall.

The order of finish among the top three cable networks was the same for the fifth consecutive week. Fox News Channel was first, averaging 2.464 million viewers; MSNBC second, averaging 1.904 million; and CNN third, averaging 1.283 million.

Fox News Channel had nine of the top 20 prime-time cable programs. MSNBC had eight, including a sweep of the top four by “The Rachel Maddow Show.” The History Channel, Hallmark Channel and AMC had one each.

“Criminal Minds” topped the list of the most-watched shows on the four streaming services whose figures are publicly released by Nielsen, while “Bridgerton” dropped to second after back-to-back first-place finishes.

“Bridgerton” was second, with viewers watching 936 minutes of Netflix’s steamy eight-episode alternate-history period drama in its sixth week of release. Viewership was down 11.8% from 1.061 billion the previous week. “Bridgerton” surpassed the 1-billion-minutes mark each of its first five weeks.