TV Ratings: Olympics, Tucker Carlson Dominate

NBC’s prime-time broadcast viewership of the Tokyo Olympics for the second week was down 46% compared to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics of 2016, reports The Associated Press citing Nielsen date. In the first week, NBC was down 52% compared to Rio.

Last Tuesday, the 14.3 million people who watched the Games on NBC was actually up from the 14 million that had watched a week earlier from Tokyo. Generally, viewership goes down in the second week of the Olympics as viewers begin to tire of the nightly competition.

NBC said the Tokyo games averaged 15.6 million in prime-time viewership when the main network, cable outlets and streaming are added in. That’s down 42% from the Olympics in Brazil.

The Tokyo streaming consumption of 5.5 billion minutes was up 22% over Rio, NBC said.

For the week, NBC averaged 10.6 million viewers in prime time. CBS had 2.3 million, Fox had 2.1 million, ABC had 1.9 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 960,000.

➤Top 20 Prime-Time Shows (Total Viewers):

1. “Summer Olympics” (Tuesday), NBC, 14.31 million.

2. “Summer Olympics” (Monday), NBC, 13.71 million.

3. “Summer Olympics” (Wednesday), NBC, 11.01 million.

4. “Summer Olympics” (Thursday), NBC, 10.99 million.

5. “Summer Olympics” (Friday), NBC, 9.85 million.

6. “Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony,” NBC, 8.82 million.

7. “Summer Olympics” (Saturday), NBC, 8.45 million.

8. NFL Exhibition Football: Dallas vs. Pittsburgh, Fox, 7.31 million.

9. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.10 million.

10. “Tokyo Gold,” NBC, 5.84 million.

11. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 3.97 million.

12. “Big Brother” (Thursday), CBS, 3.73 million.

13. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 3.66 million.

14. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 3.64 million.

15. “Family Game Fight,” NBC, 3.39 million.

16. “NCIS,” CBS, 3.16 million.

17. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Wednesday), Fox News, 3.07 million.

18. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Monday), Fox News, 2.927 million.

19. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Tuesday), Fox News, 2.923 million.

20. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Thursday), Fox News, 2.8 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” won the evening news ratings race with and average of 7.4 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 4.7 million.

Fox News Channel was the most-watched cable network in prime time, averaging 2.06 million viewers. The USA network had 1.16 million, MSNBC had 1.01 million, HGTV had 980,000 and TLC had 910,000.

➤CableTV Ranker (Total Viewers):

➤Cable TV Ranker (Viewers 25-54)

TVNews reports Tucker Carlson Tonight remained the No. 1 show on cable news last week. Broadcasting from Hungary, the program averaged 2.9 million viewers, and 467,000 in the 25-54 demo. Fox News’ 8 p.m. offering averaged 2.9 million total viewers to go with 425,000 adults 25-54 the previous week.  

Fox had the top shows on cable news in total viewers. After Carlson, came The Five, Hannity, The Ingraham Angle and Special Report with Bret Baier. MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show finished No. 6 in average total viewers last week. Maddow was off last week.