For most nights at the Tokyo Olympics, NBC’s prime time coverage is drawing about half the audience that the Games had in Rio de Janeiro five years ago.
The numbers are sobering: Sunday’s NBC audience of 13 million was down 51% from the 26.7 million who watched the corresponding night in Rio. Saturday night was down 57%, last Wednesday down 53% and Tuesday down 58%, reports The Associated Press citing Nielsen data.
NBC’s best night last week, when it reached 16.2 million on Thursday, was still down 43% from Rio, Nielsen said.
“We’ve had some bad luck,” NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Shell said last week. “There was a drumbeat of negativity ... and that has resulted in linear ratings being probably less than we expected.”
The marked change in how people experience television in the past five years plays a part in the ratings decline. NBC’s prime time had, on average, 35% less viewers this season than it had in 2015-16, Nielsen said.
One saving grace is NBC’s dominance against its rivals. In fact, Fox last week averaged below 1 million viewers in prime time, believed to be the first time that’s ever happened for one of the top four broadcast networks.
NBC averaged 13.4 million viewers in prime time last week. CBS had 2.22 million, ABC had 2.17 million, Univision had 1.9 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million, and Fox and Telemundo tied with 980,000.
➤Top 20 Prime Time Shows (Total viewers):
1. “Summer Olympics” (Thursday), NBC, 16.19 million.
2. “Summer Olympics” (Monday), NBC, 14.76 million.
3. “Summer Olympics” (Tuesday), NBC, 14.01 million.
4. “Summer Olympics” (Sunday), NBC, 13.02 million.
5. “Summer Olympics” (Wednesday), NBC, 12.29 million.
6. “Summer Olympics” (Friday), NBC, 11.73 million.
7. “Summer Olympics” (Saturday), NBC, 10.91 million.
9. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 4.9 million.
10. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 3.86 million.
11. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 3.79 million.
12. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 3.4 million.
13. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 3.36 million.
14. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 3.33 million.
15. “NCIS,” CBS, 3.31 million.
16. Soccer: Copa Oro 2021: Mexico vs. Canada, 3.26 million.
17. “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” ABC, 3.25 million.
18. “The $100,000 Pyramid,” ABC, 3.19 million.
19. “Press Your Luck,” ABC, 3.05 million.
20. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Tuesday), Fox News, 3.01 million
ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the evening news ratings race with an average of 7.5 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 7.2 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 4.8 million.
Fox News Channel led the cable networks with an average of 1.95 million viewers in prime time. USA had 1.68 million, MSNBC had 1.1 million, HGTV had 979,000 and TLC had 882,000.
➤Basic Cable Ranker (Total Viewers):
➤Basie Cable Ranker (Viewers 25-54):
Tucker Carlson Tonight remained the No. 1 show on cable news last week, averaging 2.9 million viewers, and 425,000 in the 25-54 demo. The program averaged 3 million total viewers to go with 515,000 adults 25-54 the previous week. Fox had the top 5 shows on cable news in total viewers. After Carlson, came The Five, Hannity, The Ingraham Angle and Special Report with Bret Baier rounding out the top five. MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show finished No. 6 in average total viewers last week.
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