Ratings Report: ACM Awards Win Night

48th Annual ACM Hosts, Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton. Photo: Ethan Miller

The 48th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards helped CBS rank No. 1 among total viewers last night (4/7), according to preliminary primetime reports from Nielsen.

The annual Las Vegas country show drew 15.38 million viewers for live and same day viewing, the highest measure since 1998. Last year’s show attracted 12.2 million viewers, down from 13 million the previous year.

Audiences for the 3-hour CBS country broadcast resulted in a 4.3 rating among adults 18-49 and a share of 11, its best deliveries for this demographic since 2001.

CBS ranked first among the major networks, followed by NBC which averaged 3.7 million viewers for its largest drawing show, The Apprentice. ABC took in 3.3 million viewers, while FOX showed an average of 2.8 million.

Last night’s more than 15 million viewers slightly bested the approximately 13.6 million who tuned in to the Nov. 1 CMA Awards on ABC.

According to BlueFin Labs, the ACM Awards raked in 1.9 million social media comments and 619.4 million impressions, up from 676,000 comments in 2012.

In addition, more than 1.1 million votes were cast for the ACM’s Entertainer of the Year and New Artist of the Year categories combined, an increase of 22% over last year’s vote.

GAC will re-air the awards event Monday, June 3, 9:00 p.m./ET.