In a battle of reality show finales, NBC’s “The Voice” got the best of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” in key demos on Tuesday, with both shows down noticeably from last year and again paying the price of head-to-head combat.
Impacting the ratings for last night’s reality show finales was another strong delivery for the NBA Western Conference finals on TNT, with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s victory over the Golden State Warriors netting a 6.8 overnight household rating. This was the best NBA rating this postseason, edging out Game 1 of this series (6.7), which ended up averaging a 3.7 rating in adults 18-49 and 8.7 million total viewers.
Looking at Tuesday’s broadcast action, NBC’s “The Voice” averaged a 2.1 rating/7 share in adults 18-49 (likely to rise to a 2.2 in the finals) and 10.3 million viewers overall from 9 to 11 p.m., down more than 20% from last spring’s season-ender but standing as Tuesday’s top broadcast in all key demos as well as total viewers. It followed a special hourlong recap (1.4/5 in 18-49, 7.5 million viewers overall) of the previous night’s performance finale.
At ABC, “Dancing With the Stars” averaged a 1.6 rating/5 share in adults 18-49 and 10.3 million viewers overall, down 30% from last year’s finale. Leading into the reality show, “Fresh Off the Boat” (1.2/5 in 18-49, 4.9 million viewers overall) and “The Real O’Neals” (1.0/4 in 18-49, 4.2 million viewers overall) were up a tick from last week in their finales. (A year ago, “Dancing” had a stronger 1.9 demo lead-in from a special episode of “The Bachelorette”).
CBS aired a “Big Brother”-themed edition of “The Price Is Right” (1.1/4 in 18-49, 6.4 million viewers overall), down a little from the previous night’s “Survivor”-themed hour. It was followed by original episodes of drama “Person of Interest” at both 9 (0.9/3 in 18-49, 5.3 million viewers overall) and 10 (0.9/3 in 18-49, 4.9 million viewers overall).
Fox’s unscripted combo of “Hotel Hell” (0.8/3 in 18-49, 2.5 million viewers overall) and “Coupled” (0.5/2 in 18-49, 1.3 million viewers overall) was an afterthought for viewers on a night of the big “Voice” and “Dancing” finales. “Coupled” at least managed to maintain its premiere score of last week.
And at CW, the season finale of “The Flash” (1.2/5 in 18-49, 3.3 million viewers overall) was No. 1 among the broadcasters in men 18-34 (1.4/7), men 18-49 (1.4/6) and adults 18-34 (1.1/5); its averages also figure to go up in the finals since they do not include the final two minutes of the episode (9-9:02). “Containment” held steady behind it (0.5/2 in 18-49, 1.5 million viewers overall).
