Going into Wednesday night, NBC-only primetime coverage of the Olympic was up to an average 28.6 million viewers.
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Despite Wednesday night’s Rio Olympics lineup of top athletes including USA beach volleyball stars Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross, superstar American swimmer and multiple gold medal victor Katie Ledecky, and Japanese iconic gymnast Kohei Uchimura, Nielsen ratings saw a drop in prime viewing for NBC, down 14 percent from the comparable night in 2012 at the London Olympic games.
But even adding in the 2.3m watching on cable on Tuesday, and the 404,000 streaming live video and earlier events, still leaves NBC short of the 38.8m figure it reached during the equivalent evening in 2012.
“One of the indicators of changing viewer habits, especially with these Olympics, is that our digital consumption has more than tripled from London in each of the first three days of full competition”, Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports Group, said in a statement.
“The 2016 Rio Olympics is the first in U.S. media history with prime-time Olympic coverage on channels other than the primary broadcast network”, NBC said in a release.
Based on those measures, Rio isn’t almost as far behind as London, when NBC did not offer streaming or cable coverage in primetime, as it is based just on broadcast.
Saturday’s prime-time coverage averaged 20.63 million viewers, 28.1 percent less than the record 28.72-million average for the first Saturday of competition in the 2012 Games. For all its spinning, NBC makes a good argument that ratings don’t tell the complete story here. The opening spectacle and events including gymnastics combined with two episodes of “America’s Got Talent” to give NBC five of the top 10 shows, Nielsen said. ABC averaged a 1.1 rating and 4 share. ION Television drew 1.2 million, followed by CW with 1 million viewers. After seven nights, NBC’s prime time coverage is averaging an 8.4 rating in the demographic, a lower average than any Summer Olympics since 2000.
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