The NBCSN cable network had its best day ever on Friday with an average of 1.38 million viewers tuning in from 8 a.m.to midnight ET for coverage of US women’s soccer, women’s basketball and men’s basketball.
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Through 10 nights of Olympics coverage, NBC’s average primetime viewership (27.8 million viewers) has generated a +276% advantage over ABC, CBS and FOX combined – the second-largest Olympics advantage at this point on record (behind only the 2012 London Games). However, there is no doubt that the execs at NBC have some thinking to do about how they can pitch 2020’s Tokyo games to advertisers and the public alike the avoid a ratings regression a second year in a row. Fox averaged 1.19 million viewers to finish fourth among the major broadcast networks for the 18th consecutive week and sixth overall, behind cable’s Fox News Channel and Disney Channel. The U.S. women’s team and Simone Biles have dominated gymnastics in Rio, while American men have been less competitive.
The week’s most-watched night came last Tuesday when an average of 33.44 million viewers watched coverage featuring the USA victory in the women’s gymnastics team final. Sunday’s primetime coverage hit 26.7M viewers featuring Usain Bolt’s third straight Summer Games victory in the men’s 100-meter final.
As usual, Univision was the most-watched Spanish-language network, averaging 1.59 million viewers.
Ledecky set a new record time for the 800-meter race, besting her own mark that she set four years ago at the London games. Those stats remain off from the London Olympics by more than 5 million.
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Through Saturday night, 58.5 percent of the competition time on NBC’s prime-time telecasts involved women’s sports, with 41.5 percent devoted to men, according to research released Monday by three college professors writing a book, “Olympic Television: Inside the Biggest Show on Earth”.
