OLYMPICS BOOST RATINGS FOR TODAY, NIGHTLY NEWS
February 12, 2014 by admin · Leave a Comment
Besides scoring record or near-record ratings for NBC, the network’s Winter Olympics coverage has also boosted ratings for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, which precedes NBC’s primetime coverage, and the Today show, which is originating from Sochi. (Also, viewers tend to leave their TVs connected to the channel they were watching when they go to bed.) As noted by TVbytheNumbers.com, Today has topped ABC’s Good Morning America every day since the games began, producing its best ratings since August 2012, when the London Summer Olympics were in full swing. Williams’s 11.18 million viewers on Saturday represented the news show’s best Saturday ratings since the London Olympics in July, 2012. Actually, all nightly news shows saw a significant rise in viewers. Nightly averaged 11 million viewers for the week. ABC New with Diane Sawyer also saw a big boost in viewers, with 9.5 million tuning in. And CBS, although coming in third, nevertheless improved its ratings to an average 8.5 million viewers for the week. Overall for the week, NBC was way out in front with an average 9.6 rating and a 15 share. CBS was a distant second with a 6.0/9. Fox was in third place with a 3.1 rating and a 5 share, edging out Fox with a 3.1/5 and ABC with a 3.0/5.
The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research:
1. Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, NBC, 17.0/28; 2. Winter Olympics Sunday, NBC, 14.4/22; 3. Winter Olympics, Saturday, NBC, 13.9/24; 4. NCIS, CBS, 12.0/18; 5. Winter Olympics Thursday, NBC, 11.3/18; 6. The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 10.7/16; 7. NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS, 10.0/15; 8. Beatles: A Grammy Salute, CBS, 8.2/12; 9. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 8.0/12; 10. Criminal Minds, CBS, 7.9/12.
