MLB All-Star Game Leads Fox to Ratings Win

The last baseball all-star game at Yankee Stadium and the most-watched midsummer classic since 2002 — at least through the first nine innings — helped Fox to a TV ratings victory.

An estimated 14.5 million people watched last week's game for the first nine innings, much of it in prime time, according on Nielsen Media Research. The extra part of the 15-inning game, which stretched past 1 a.m. on the East Coast, was seen by 11.6 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Fox averaged 7.1 million viewers last week (4.5 rating, 8 share). CBS had 6.4 million viewers (4.3, 8), NBC 5.5 million (3.6, 7), ABC 4.5 million (2.9, 5), the CW 1.7 million (1.1, 2), My Network TV 990,000 (0.7, 1) and ION Television 390,000 (0.3, 1).

Among the Spanish-language channels, Univision led with 3.4 million viewers (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 960,000 (0.5, 1), TeleFutura 550,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca 110,000 (0.1, 0).

The evening news race was a virtual dead heat, with NBC's ''Nightly News'' averaging 7.23 viewers and ABC's ''World News'' 7.22 million (both 5 rating, 11 share). ''CBS Evening News'' had 5.5 million viewers (3.9, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,128,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of July 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: ''Major League Baseball All-Star Game,'' Fox, 14.54 million; ''America's Got Talent,'' NBC, 12.79 million; ''All-Star Pre-game Show,'' Fox, 10.37 million; ''Criminal Minds,'' CBS, 9.26 million; ''So You Think You Can Dance'' (Wednesday), Fox, 9.01 million; ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,'' CBS, 8.92 million; ''Wipeout,'' ABC, 8.65 million; ''CSI: NY,'' CBS, 8.6 million; ''So You Think You Can Dance'' (Thursday), Fox, 8.4 million; ''Two and a Half Men,'' CBS, 8.39 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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