CBS going to the dogs, and winning ratings (AP)

NEW YORK - CBS got a paw up on its competition with the debut of "Greatest American Dog" helping the network to a midsummer ratings victory.

The new competition was the sixth-most popular show on prime-time television last week, with 9.5 million viewers, Nielsen Media Research reported Tuesday. There was no measurement of canine interest.

With a month to go before the Olympics, summer's run of contrived network competition continued to dominate. Eight of TV's 11 most-watched programs were games, topped again by NBC's "America's Got Talent."

The CBS premiere of "Flashpoint," a police drama bought from Canadian television at a time networks were concerned about a prolonged writers strike, finished No. 15 for the week with 8.1 million viewers.

CBS' prime-time average of 6.9 million viewers (4.6 rating, 6 share) easily outdistanced its competition. Fox had 5.8 million viewers (3.6, 7), but won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic. ABC had 5.52 million viewers (3.7, 7), NBC 5.51 million (3.6, 6), the CW 1.5 million (1.0, 2), My Network TV 950,000 (0.6, 1) and ION Television 430,000 (0.3, 1).

Among the Spanish language networks, Univision averaged 3.3 million viewers (1.7 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura 520,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca 110,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" won the evening news ratings race, averaging 7.5 million viewers (5.2 rating, 11 share). ABC's "World News" had 7.3 million (5.1, 11) and the "CBS Evening News" 5.6 million (3.9, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,128,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of July 7-13, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "America's Got Talent," NBC, 12.73 million; "Wipeout," ABC, 10.6 million; "The Bachelorette (Monday, 10 p.m.)," ABC, 9.99 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 9.86 million; "The Bachelorette (Monday, 8 p.m.), ABC, 9.53 million; "Greatest American Dog," CBS, 9.53 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 9.14 million; "So You Think You Can Dance" (Wednesday), Fox, 8.93 million; "Hell's Kitchen," Fox, 8.91 million; "CSI: NY," CBS, 8.9 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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