The total audience delivery for Tuesday’s primetime coverage averaged a 20.5 household rating with 36.1 million viewers – ranking as the best night of the 2016 Rio Olympics in both metrics.
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The company didn’t allow its cable affiliates and its website to compete with the London Olympics prime-time telecast, so there’s no way to compare this year’s “total audience delivery” figure with 2012.
On NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, more than 1.3 million unique users streamed the women’s gymnastics team victory Tuesday afternoon, ranking as NBC Olympics’ best-ever Summer Games stream.
But Twitter complaints aren’t the only thing NBC has to worry about: ratings were way down in the Olympics’ first few days, though they’re starting to recover as the Games go on, according to Variety. This milestone comes one day after NBCOlympics’ live streaming for the Rio Olympics surpassed the entire London Games.
Going into Wednesday night, which saw a steep ratings drop after several nights of Michael Phelps-fueled interest, the 2016 Rio Summer Games were pulling an average 28.6 million viewers and 15.6 household rating.
Needless to say, I enjoyed my day spent live streaming events because it was free of NBC’s primetime baggage, and I plan to keep streaming throughout the remainder of the Games (so long, productivity). 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.
The week’s only other programs to average more than 8 million viewers were the season finale of the ABC dating series, “The Bachelorette”, sixth for the week, averaging 8.58 million and “The Bachelorette: After The Final Rose”, which followed and was seventh for the week, averaging 8.11 million. Views topped 1 billion live minutes of streaming as of Wednesday night – a 232 percent increase from 2012, though London did not offer a live-stream during primetime. CBS had 3.9 million and Fox 1.7 million, the latter nudged closely by Univision with 1.6 million and Telemundo with 1.4 million.
For the digital platform, streaming of videos and social media consumption are setting new records in many areas.
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Last night’s NBC-only Rio Olympics coverage (8-11:05 p.m. ET/PT) posted a 16.4/28 household rating – the highest NBC primetime rating of the Rio Olympics. ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” was second, averaging 7.73 million. The “CBS Evening News” had 6.3 million.
