Fox News Channel’s two-part documentary on the former Navy SEAL who claims to have fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden is the network’s most popular documentary ever.
Reporter Peter Doocy’s interview with Robert O’Neill averaged just over three million viewers last Tuesday and Wednesday, the Nielsen company said. The second part had 3.37 million viewers, effectively tying with an edition of “The O’Reilly Factor” to be Fox’s most-watched show of the week.
There’s still some confusion about the 2011 raid; Pentagon officials say that it is not clear who fired the shot that killed the al-Qaida leader.
Meanwhile, CBS’ effort to establish a new Hollywood awards show may have cost the network a ratings victory last week. Most weeks, CBS is the most popular network for its prime time programming, but was second behind NBC last week.
On Friday, CBS gave its entire prime-time lineup to the inaugural broadcast of the Hollywood Film Awards and a post-awards show. For the night, the network averaged 3.6 million viewers, Nielsen said. On a typical Friday this season, CBS’ lineup of “The Amazing Race,” “Blue Bloods” and “Hawaii Five-0” has averaged 10.7 million viewers.
NBC also boosted its lineup with a stunt involving a shared storyline on “Chicago Fire,” Chicago PD” and “Law & Order: SVU. That, coupled with a special Wednesday edition of “The Voice,” helped the network boost its Wednesday night live viewership by three million over its season average.
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