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Viewers only nibble at summer fare

By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press
Published August 11, 2006

NEW YORK - Network television is in a summer snooze, with six reruns, two talent competitions and an exhibition football game filling up Nielsen Media Research's top 10 last week.

Nothing has truly caught the public's attention this summer. While NBC's America's Got Talent and Fox's So You Think You Can Dance have consistently made the top 10, they generally garner about a third of the audience reached by their obvious model, American Idol.

The most impressive success story has been Univision's Spanish-language telenovela La Fea Mas Bella. Last week's Thursday edition had a larger audience than any scripted entertainment program on ABC all week, with the exception of two Grey's Anatomy reruns.

Two reruns of CBS's Without a Trace made the top 10 last week.

For the week, CBS led the way with an average of 7.4-million viewers. NBC had 6.9-million, Fox 5.6-million, ABC 5.3-million, UPN 1.9-million and the WB 1.7-million and the i network 640,000.

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.3-million viewers, Telemundo had 810,000 and TeleFutura had 490,000.

NBC's Nightly News won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.4-million viewers. ABC's World News had 7.7-million, and the CBS Evening News had 7.2-million.

1. CSI: Miami, CBS, 11.2

2. Without a Trace, CBS, 10.6

3. Oakland vs. Philadelphia, NBC, 10.5

4. America's Got Talent, NBC, 10.5

5. Two & a Half Men, CBS, 10

6. NFL Pregame (Sunday) NBC, 9.8

7. CSI, CBS, 9.7

8. You Can Dance-Wed., Fox, 9.3

9. Without a Trace-Sun., CBS, 9.2

10. 60 Minutes, CBS, 8.9

11. SVU, NBC, 8.9

12. Cold Case, CBS, 8.7

13. You Can Dance-Thur., Fox, 8.3

14. Criminal Minds, CBS, 8

15. How I Met Your Mother, CBS, 8

16. Got Talent-Thur., NBC, 7.9

17. CSI: NY, CBS, 7.8

18. Hell's Kitchen, Fox, 7.8

19. Law & Order, NBC, 7.6

20. 48 Hours Mystery, CBS, 7.6

[Last modified August 10, 2006, 08:36:02]