TV Ratings: Viewers Spike For Holiday Events

There were a number of events over the holiday broke ratings records, according to CNBC..

NBC drew an all-time record 28.5 million viewers this year during its broadcast of the 97th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, up 6% from last year, Variety reported Friday. The feat is impressive as swaths of consumers opt to cut the cord and move away from linear TV. Despite the trend, more than two-thirds of the parade audience, about 22.3 million viewers, tuned in via traditional TV, according to Variety.

CBS’ Thanksgiving broadcast of the Dallas Cowboys’ win over the Washington Commanders was the most watched program on any network since Super Bowl LVII earlier this year, the network said in a Friday post on X, formerly Twitter. The game captured 41.8 million viewers based on Nielson data, peaking at nearly 44.3 million viewers. The broadcast’s viewership rose a whopping 31% from last year’s CBS Thanksgiving game, but came in about 500,000 viewers lower than last year’s Cowboys-Giants matchup in the comparable timeslot.

While CBS did not release ratings numbers for Paramount+, the network said it notched its most-streamed NFL regular season game ever on the streaming platform.

Fox’s Packers-Lions matchup grabbed 33.7 million viewers per Nielson, the most watched Thanksgiving Day game ever for the 12:30 p.m. ET timeslot and up 6% from the comparable game last year, the network said Tuesday. Fox, unlike its competitors, does not have a dedicated streaming platform for its main programming.

NBC Sports said on Friday that its broadcast of the San Francisco 49ers’ victory over the Seattle Seahawks was the second-most watched Thanksgiving primetime game ever, behind 2015′s Thanksgiving Bears-Packers matchup. The broadcast averaged 26.9 million viewers across the network’s platforms based on fast national Nielson data. The game was also NBC Sports’ most-streamed primetime NFL Thanksgiving game ever, with viewership led by its platform Peacock, NBC Sports said Friday.

As a whole, average viewership across all three games was 34.1 million, the highest for Thanksgiving Day on record, the NFL said Tuesday.

📺TOP 20 TV SHOWS    

Ranking is based on ratings data as of Friday, November 24, 2023. The audience figures are derived from the latest Nielsen daily, weekly, or monthly P2+ program audience averages, whichever is the most recently available within the past seven-day window.

Traditional TV’s Thanksgiving ratings success comes at a critical time, as the industry tries to survive and adapt while consumers cut the cord. Viewership also indicated that linear TV does not have to suffer for streaming to capture strong ratings, and vice versa.