More than 17 million people were tuned in at any average minute during the three-hour-plus telecast, according to Nielsen data supplied by CBS, the network whose turn it was to televise the awards ceremony. That average compared favorably to last year, when about 13 million viewers watched on ABC.
CBS estimated that about 40 million people caught some portion of Sunday’s telecast. The Emmys audience was inflated by the highly rated Jets-Bills football game that immediately preceded the awards on CBS (and delayed the start time by a couple of minutes).
Cable award winners like HBO’s “Veep” and Showtime’s “Homeland,” which have much smaller audiences than CBS, welcomed the exposure to millions of potential new viewers. The biggest winner of the night, AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” was competing with the Emmys somewhat — its second-to-last episode was shown at 9 p.m. Eastern, during the second hour of the ceremony.
“Breaking Bad” has been scoring new personal bests in the ratings as it barrels toward a Sept. 29 finale, and Sunday was no exception: 6.6 million viewers tuned in, beating last week’s record of 6.4 million. The audience for the show continues to skew young, with 4.3 million viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.
At times on Sunday the Emmys show seemed as dark as the drug-fueled story lines of “Breaking Bad”; some viewers took to calling them the “death Emmys” on Twitter because of the inordinate number of in-memoriam segments about deceased stars. But the producers will be able to point to the ratings in rationalizing their programming choices. CBS said the total of 17.6 million viewers was the best for the Emmys since 2005.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/business/media/emmys-draw-17-million-viewers-up-from-recent-shows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss