• by Wayne Friedman , August 16, 2012

The post-Olympics lull for the broadcast networks continued with the big summer reality shows only up a bit in recent original airings for Wednesday.

NBC held court with its "America's Got Talent" at 9 p.m. -- the highest-rated show on Wednesday -- with a Nielsen 2.3 rating/6 share, up slightly from its original episode a week ago.

CBS' "Big Brother" was right behind at 8 p.m. with a 2.1/7, up two-tenths of a rating point from a week ago on Wednesday. Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance?" returned after a short hiatus with a fresh two-hour episode and got to a 1.8/5, virtually even with its last original episode.

With everything else in reruns, Fox grabbed a small midweek 18-49 victory: a 1.7 rating/5 share average; NBC was at 1.6/5; Univision 1.5/4; CBS 1.4/4; ABC at 1.2/5; and CW a 0.4/1.

Among all viewers, NBC had 6.2 million; CBS, 5.6 million; Fox, 4.7 million; ABC, 3.6 million; Univision, 3.4 million; and CW, 970,000.

How does this compare with cable's offerings on the night?

USA's "Royal Pains" posted 3.95 million viewers, as the biggest cable-viewed show on the night. TBS's rerun of "Big Bang Theory" was next, grabbing a 2.96 million viewer total at 10:30 p.m. Turner's Adult Swim programming block "Family Guy" got a 2.95 million number at 11 p.m., while its 11:30 p.m. showing took a 2.93 million total. TBS' 10 p.m. "Bang" rerun scored 2.84 million viewers.

After this came "Storage Wars: Texas" on A&E with 2.53 million at 9 p.m., which was followed by another "Storage Wars: Texas" episode at 9:30 p.m., which had 2.51 million.

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