ABC's 'Glass House' not shattering any records; CBS had tried to block show

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This June 18, 2012 photo released by ABC shows contestants Apollo, left, and Jeffrey are shown during the premiere episode of "The Glass House." A federal judge on Friday sided with ABC that “Glass House” does not violated rival network CBS’ copyright and trade secret interests and that the “Big Brother” network is unlikely to win the case. (AP Photo/ABC, Nicole Wilder)

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Now that ABC's "The Glass House" is on the air, it's hard not to wonder why CBS was so upset.

The ABC reality series debuted to just under 4 million viewers last week, placing it No. 63 in Nielsen's weekly rankings even in a quiet summer week. The Nielsen Co.'s preliminary ratings found that this Monday's second episode did even worse, reaching 3.3 million viewers.

CBS went to federal court to try to block ABC from showing the series, arguing it violated copyrights and trade secrets from its own "Big Brother." A federal court judge in Los Angeles rejected CBS' argument.

CBS may have been concerned about "The Glass House" stealing its thunder, since the 14th season of "Big Brother" doesn't debut until July 12. "The Glass House" is scheduled to run for only six weeks, if it lasts that long.

Last season, "Big Brother" averaged 8.3 million viewers, Nielsen said.

ABC still won last week's ratings competition, primarily because the last two games of the NBA Finals between Miami and Oklahoma City reached far more viewers than anything else on the air. While happy with the ratings, ABC had to be disappointed the series lasted only five games.

ABC averaged 6.4 million viewers in prime time last week (4.1 rating, 7 share). CBS was second with a 5.6 million (3.7, 7), NBC had 4.6 million (2.9, 5), Fox had 4.1 million (2.5, 4), ION Television had 1.1 million (0.7, 1) and the CW had 700,000 (0.5, 1).

Among the Spanish-language stations, Univision led with a 3.6 million viewer average in prime time (1.9, 3), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.7, 1), TeleFutura had 510,000 (0.3, 0), Estrella had 190,000 and Azteca 90,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.5 million viewers (5.1, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 6.9 million (4.7, 10) and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.6 million viewers (3.7, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 per cent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of June 18-24, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NBA Finals: Oklahoma City vs. Miami, Game 5, ABC, 18.46 million; NBA Finals: Oklahoma City vs. Miami, Game 4, ABC, 17.45 million; "America's Got Talent" (Monday), NBC, 11.43 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.38 million; "NCIS," CBS, 8.24 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 8.22 million. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 7.42 million; "2 Broke Girls" (Thursday), CBS, 7.14 million; "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday, 9 p.m.), NBC, 7.04 million; "The Bachelorette," ABC, 7.04 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com