‘The Gray Man’ leads on Netflix in first full week of release

The movie “The Gray Man” was Netflix’s most popular offering last week, with viewers spending 96.47 million hours watching the action thriller between July 25 and Sunday, its first full week of release, according to figures released by Netflix Tuesday.

Viewership was up 8.9% from the 88.55 million hours watched the previous week when it was available for three days and was the streaming service’s second ranked program, first among movies.

The fourth season of “Virgin River” was the most streamed television series on Netflix for the second time in the two weeks it has been available, with 87.94 million hours watched of the 12 episodes of the small-town drama, 16.6% less than the 105.44 million hours in its first five days of release the previous week, the most among any Netflix program.

NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” was the top rated prime-time program for the third time in five weeks, averaging 6.467 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen Tuesday. The CBS’ news magazine “60 Minutes” was the only other program to top 5 million viewers, averaging 6.042 million viewers.

The biggest audience for sporting event was for ESPN’s coverage of the July 27 game between the New York Mets and New York Yankees which averaged 2.12 million viewers, the most for a regular-season MLB weeknight broadcast on ESPN since the Sept. 14, 2007, game between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox, excluding opening night and tiebreaker games. The Mets’ 3-2 victory was 14th among prime-time cable programs and 54th overall.

CBS won the network race the fourth time in five weeks, averaging 2.84 million viewers, while ABC and NBC tied for second, averaging 2.45 million each.

“Celebrity Family Feud” was ABC’s ratings leader for the fifth time in the five weeks since the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Final. Sunday’s show matching the Grammy-winning R&B a cappella group Boyz II Men and comedian Amber Ruffin and her family; and the families of comic actors Joe Lo Truglio and Thomas Lennon, averaged 4.527 million viewers, third for the week.

Fox averaged 1.38 million viewers, topped by the cooking competition “MasterChef,” 43rd for the week, averaging 2.35 million viewers.

The CW averaged 350,000 viewers. Its biggest draw was the investigative documentary series “Mysteries Decoded,” which averaged 583,000 viewers, 161st among broadcast programs. Its overall rank was not available.

The 20 most-watched prime-time programs consisted of “America’s Got Talent”; “60 Minutes”; seven ABC alternative series; three episodes of the CBS alternative series “Big Brother”; reruns of five CBS scripted series; and three editions of the Fox News Channel political talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Each of the four top ranked prime-time cable programs were editions of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” led by the July 25 edition, which averaged 3.286 million viewers, 12th overall. It was the sixth time in seven weeks that at least three broadcasts of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” were at the top of the cable rankings.

Fox News Channel was the top cable network in prime time for the eighth consecutive week, averaging 2.114 million viewers. MSNBC was second, averaging 1.099 million and Hallmark Channel third, averaging 970,000.

The cable top 20 consisted of 15 Fox News Channel weeknight political talk shows — five broadcasts each of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “Hannity” and “The Ingraham Angle”; the July 25 edition of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show”; ESPN’s coverage of the July 27 Mets-Yankees game; the first two hour-long segments of the USA Network professional wrestling program “WWE Raw” July 25; and the TLC dating series “90 Day Fiance.”