TV Ratings: 'America's Got Talent' holds on to Monday lead for NBC

Fast National ratings for Thursday, May 24, 2012.

The second Monday episode of the Howard Stern era of "America's Got Talent" held up reasonably well at the end of a holiday weekend, leading NBC to a win in demos and viewers on a slow Memorial Day night.

For the full three hours of primetime, NBC averaged a 1.9 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic, and 6.2 million viewers overall. Thanks to "The Bachelorette," ABC was second with a 1.5 and 5.2 million, followed by CBS (1.2, 5.1 million), FOX (0.8, 2.4 million) and the CW (0.3, 678,000).

8 p.m. -- Last week's debut of the Stern-ified "Got Talent" had been considered something of a disappointment considering how much NBC spent to hire the radio legend. The hope was that the ratings would rise once there was lesser competition, but the Monday of a three-day weekend is a bad gauge of that. As it is, "Got Talent" (2.7 demo rating, 10 million viewers) was down 13 percent in the demo from last week, but up about 500,000 viewers. It was still an easy winner for the hour, followed by "The Bachelorette" (1.7, 5.6 million), down more than 30 percent from its first hour last week (which had a "Dancing with the Stars" lead-in), then "How I Met Your Mother" and "2 Broke Girls" repeats on CBS (1.1, 4 million), a "House" repeat on FOX (0.7, 2.3 million) and a "Gossip Girl" repeat on the CW (0.3, 560,000).

9 p.m. -- "The Bachelorette" and NBC's "American Ninja Warrior" were in a dead heat in the demo, each getting a 2.0 rating, but "Bachelorette" drew 5.9 million compared to 5.7 million for "Ninja." CBS was third with repeats of "Two and a Half Men" and "Mike & Molly" (1.3, 5.6 million), followed by another "House" repeat for FOX (0.8, 2.5 million) and a "Hart of Dixie" repeat on the CW (0.3, 797,000).

10 p.m. -- Drama repeats on all three networks, with CBS "Hawaii Five-0" (1.2, 5.5 million) edging out NBC's "Grimm" (0.9, 2.8 million) and ABC's "Castle" (0.8, 4.2 million).

All ratings information comes from preliminary Fast National Nielsen data, which includes live and same-day DVR viewing. All numbers are subject to change.