Rankings were at their lowest level for the 2018 Emmy Awards

NEW YORK – The biggest TV night was not so important. The Emmy Awards attracted a record audience of 10.2 million people, down 11% from the past two years.

Michael Che and Colin Jost of "Saturday Night Live" hosted the NBC Awards Ceremony on Monday. Amazon's "Wonderful Ms. Maisel" became the first broadcast of a streaming service to win the best comedy, while HBO's "Game of Thrones" was the largest.

The show has reached an almost identical audience of 11.4 million each over the past two years, Nielsen said.

The drop to 10.21 million continues a worrying trend for television shows. The Oscars audience dropped by 19% compared to 2017 and that of the Grammys by 23%.

The increased fragmentation of television undoubtedly plays a role in the levels of interest of the audience. When "Frasier" won prizes in the 1990s, comedy was regularly seen in nearly 20 million homes. Streaming shows like "Mrs Maisel" are much less popular and, in fact, it is still difficult to get precise figures on the number of people watching them.

Three times in the 1990s, the Emmy Awards audience exceeded 20 million people.

On the plus side, it is likely that the most-watched marriage proposal was presented. Emmy Award winner Glenn Weiss encouraged viewers by offering his girlfriend, on stage, to accept a prize for performing the Oscars. Jan Svendsen said yes.

Continuing on the hot news market, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC recorded her best-rated week of 10 years of experience, Nielsen said.

Otherwise, football dominated television audiences last week. Five of the top ten most watched shows were football games and two more were football games, said Nielsen.

NBC won prime-time week with an average of 6.7 million viewers last week. CBS had 4.8 million viewers, ABC 4 million, Fox 2.3 million, Univision 1.4 million, ION Television 1.33 million, Telemundo 1.31 million and CW 740,000.

ESPN was the most popular cable network of the week, with an average of 2.65 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.42 million, MSNBC 2.13 million, HGTV 1.35 million and the United States 1.34 million.

ABC's World News Tonight dominated evening television news with an average of 8.8 million viewers. NBC's "Nightly News" was second at 8.3 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 6 million viewers.

For the week of September 10 to 16, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewers: NFL Football: N.Y. Giants in Dallas, NBC, 20.66 million; "NFL Pre-Game Show", NBC, 14.22 million; "60 minutes", CBS, 11.44 million; "Football Night in America", NBC, 10.89 million euros; "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 10.75 million euros; NFL Football: N.Y. Jets in Detroit, ESPN, 10.5 million; "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday) NBC, 10.15 million; NFL Football: L.A. Rams in Oakland, ESPN, 9.78 million; University Football: Ohio Street at TCU, ABC, 7.23 million; NFL Football: Cincinnati to Baltimore, NFLN, 7.06 million.

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ABC and ESPN belong to The Walt Disney Co. CBS belongs to CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox belongs to 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are the property of Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.