• by Wayne Friedman , June 19, 2008

Finally, there's a bit of summer TV program talent hitting the airwaves.

NBC's strong summer effort of a year ago, "America's Got Talent," moved to a healthy 3.6 rating/10 share against 18-49 viewers. Although "Talent" was down 16% from last year's 4.3/12 number, it did well--considering that it was up against a highly touted game six of the NBA Finals, in which the Boston Celtics were crowned champions, registering a big 6.6 rating/18 share.

Even then, "Talent" did well, as opposed to other summer reality shows of late. Poor-performing shows include two of NBC's, "American Gladiators" and "Nashville Star," and ABC's "The Bachelorette" and "The Mole."

While NBC did well with "Talent," it wasn't enough to beat ABC. The NBA Finals game gave the network a big Nielsen preliminary 4.5 rating/12 share among 18-49 viewers for the night. NBC and Fox tied for second at 3.1/9. Univision was fourth at 1.6/5, CBS fifth at 1.3/4 and CW sixth at 0.5/1.

As well as "Talent" did, it only came in at third place behind the NBA and Fox's strong summer show "Hell's Kitchen," which grabbed a 3.9 rating on the night.

CBS was pretty much out of the running. Its three-hour special "AFI's 10 Top 10," a countdown of the top 10 films in 10 different genres, could only muster a not-so-top 1.3 rating/2 share.