Part of NFL audience stays put for ‘Five-0’

Back-to-back nights of "Hawaii Five-0," including an episode immediately after the National Football League’s American Football Conference championship, gave the CBS series a wide reach this week, according to Nielsen ratings released by the network.

Sunday’s tense football game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots, which was seen by 47.7 million people, helped to vault "Five-0" to its largest audience of the season: 13.03 million people.

The episode featured intense fight scenes filmed inside Halawa Community Correctional Center and seven never-before-released songs by electric guitar legend Jimi Hendrix.

This was the second time CBS aired a "Five-0" episode after the AFC championship. In 2011, a similar piggyback helped the cop drama reach 19.3 million viewers.

On Monday, with a second new episode in as many days, "Five-0" finished first in its hour with 9.85 million viewers. The ABC show "Castle" was second with 8.82 million viewers. The NBC show "Deception" was a distant also-ran with 3.61 million viewers.

Among the key advertising demographic Monday night, adults 18-49, "Five-0 drew 2.3 percent of the total viewing audience and 6 percent of those watching TV at the time, CBS said.

Peter Lenkov, the executive producer and showrunner for "Five-0," said the Sunday night scheduling was a fantastic bonus for the show.

"Airing in a different time period with a huge lead-in like the AFC game means exposure of the show to new viewers, and now that we are in our third season, it’s also effective in getting some infrequent viewers to check McGarrett and his team out again," Lenkov said.

Lenkov regularly posts comments and photos from the show on Twitter and said he received a lot of positive feedback from excited fans.

"I can only hope that the show gets the opportunity again to have a special airing in the future," he said. "Nothing but positives for us."