TV ratings: ‘Field of Dreams’ game a win for Fox, MLB

Fox’s coverage of the “Field of Dreams” game drew the largest audience for a regular-season Major League Baseball game since 2005 and finished third among last week’s prime-time programs.

The Chicago White Sox’s 9-8 victory over the New York Yankees Thursday held in Dyersville, Iowa, near where the 1989 movie was filmed, averaged 5.85 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.

NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” topped the ratings for the fifth time in the nine weeks it has aired this summer, averaging 7.14 million viewers. An edition of the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” with three previously broadcast segments that were updated, was second among prime-time programs between Aug. 9 and Sunday, averaging 6.51 million viewers.

The Aug. 11 premiere episode of the ABC News documentary series “Superstar,” a profile of Whitney Houston, was 21st among the week’s prime-time broadcast and cable programs, and first among programs beginning at 10 p.m., averaging 2.88 million viewers.

The week’s other premiere on the five major English-language broadcast networks, Fox’s reboot of the 1977-84 ABC series “Fantasy Island,” was fourth in its 9 p.m. Tuesday time slot and 55th for the week averaging 2.05 million viewers.

ABC edged NBC 2.69 million-2.65 million to win the week’s network race. CBS was third, averaging 2.4 million while Fox was fourth, averaging 2.2 million.

The CW again was fifth among the five major English-language broadcast networks, averaging 500,000 viewers. The crime drama “Walker” was its highest rated program, averaging 1.1 million viewers, 105th among broadcast programs.

Four episodes of the Fox News Channel political talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” topped the week’s prime-time cable programs, led by the Monday episode, which averaged 3.12 million viewers, 17th for the week.

At least four episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” have topped the cable ratings for four consecutive weeks, including the week of July 26-Aug. 1 when it swept the top five spots.

Fox News Channel was first among cable networks for the sixth consecutive week, averaging 2.2 million viewers. MSNBC was second, averaging 1.29 million viewers and HGTV third, averaging 1.14 million.

CNN was seventh, averaging 782,000, also trailing TLC (1.05 million), Hallmark Channel (829,000) and History (802,000).

The 20 most-watched prime-time cable programs consisted of 14 Fox News Channel political talk shows — five episodes each of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” and four of “The Ingraham Angle” — five broadcasts of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show” and the TLC documentary series “90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?”

The Netflix romantic drama “Virgin River” ended the four-week streak for “Manifest” atop Nielsen’s list of the top 10 streamed programs. Viewers watched 2.109 billion minutes of “Virgin River” from July 12-18, the first full week its 10-episode third season was available. Viewership was up 45.5% from the 1.449 billion minutes watched the previous week, when the third season was available for three days.