NEW YORK (AP) — Adele attracted 10.3 million viewers to a busy Sunday night special where she debuted new music, facilitated a marriage proposal and dished with Oprah Winfrey about her divorce and workout routine.
The Nielsen company said the CBS show nearly had a bigger audience than April's Oscars ceremony and, when delayed viewers are eventually figured in, will likely exceed it.
Probably the two most popular musicians of the day both had weekend television spotlights to hawk new material. Taylor Swift's 10-minute performance of her song “All Too Well” on “Saturday Night Live” reached 5.8 million viewers, and the clip has already been seen more than 2.5 million times on YouTube.
The Academy Awards reached 10.4 million viewers on the night it was televised in April, the audience increasing to 10.7 million adding people who saw it on tape within seven days.
Live events generally do poorly in delayed viewing, leading to CBS' confidence that Adele will eventually pass Oscar. CBS is likely to rerun the musician's special, too.
Sunday was strong for CBS. The late afternoon Green Bay-Seattle football game, with 22.7 million viewers, was the most-watched event on television all week. That helped “60 Minutes,” which directly followed the football game, to its biggest audience since January.
CBS led all of the networks with an average of 6.1 million viewers in prime time. NBC had 5.7 million, Fox had 3.83 million, ABC had 3.75 million, Univision had 1.5 million, Ion Television had 920,000 and Telemundo had 850,000.
ESPN led the cable networks with a prime-time average of 2.91 million viewers last week. Fox News Channel had 2.37 million, Hallmark had 1.44 million, MSNBC had 1.12 million and Paramount had 897,000.
ABC's “World News Tonight” led the evening news ratings race with an average of 8.3 million viewers. NBC's “Nightly News” had 7.1 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million.
For the week of Nov. 8-14, the 20 most popular programs, their networks and viewerships:
1. NFL Football: Kansas City at Las Vegas, NBC, 16.74 million.
2. NFL Football: Baltimore at Miami, Fox, 12.92 million.
3. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 12.55 million.
4. NFL Football: Chicago at Pittsburgh, ESPN, 12.11 million.
5. “NFL Pregame,” NBC, 11.83 million.
6. “NFL Postgame,” Fox, 11.34 million.
7. “Adele: One Night Only,” CBS, 10.33 million.
8. “Football Night in America, Part 3,” NBC, 9.56 million.
9. “NFL Pregame,” Fox, 7.68 million.
10. “Yellowstone,” Paramount, 7.49 million.
11. “NCIS,” CBS, 7.32 million.
12. “FBI,” CBS, 7.17 million.
13. “NFL Pregame,” ESPN, 7.07 million.
14. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 7.04 million.
15. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.85 million.
16. “CMA Awards,” ABC, 6.833 million.
17. “Football Night in America, Part 2,” NBC, 6.83 million.
18. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 6.63 million.
19. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 6.46 million.
20. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 6.18 million.
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This story was first published on November 16, 2021. It was updated on November 17, 2021 to correct the title of the song Taylor Swift performed on “SNL” to “All Too Well.”
David Bauder, The Associated Press
