ratings

Fox‘s ALDS Game coverage led Tuesday in the demo (0.7), while NBC‘s The Voice drew the night’s largest audience (5.8 million).

ABC’s share of Monday Night Football coverage averaged 9.2 million total viewers and a 1.8 demo rating, off just 4% and one tenth from last week’s finals. Over on NBC, The Voice (6.4M/0.6) was steady week-to-week and led the night’s non-NFL fare. The Irrational (3.94M/0.3) held steady following Week 2’s uptick.

The San Fransisco 49ers defeat of the Dallas Cowboys is without a doubt the talk of the town for Week 5 of the NFL regular season. Sunday night’s matchup on NBC drew 24.3M viewers on linear TV — which rose to 26.3M when streaming viewership was factored in. That was by far the most-watched game of the week and, in fact, is the most-watched Week 5 NBC Sunday Night Football game since the program began in 2006.

NBC Sunday Night Football’s Cowboys-49ers match-up averaged 18.5 million total viewers and a 4.9 demo rating, down just 8% from the season highs set last week by the Chiefs-Jets game featuring Taylor Swift. Over on CBS, 60 Minutes (9.4M/1.1) led the night’s non-sports fare in both measures.

CBS’s Survivor easily led Wednesday both in total viewers and in the demo with 4.7 million viewers and a 0.7 rating, down week-to-week in both measures; read recap. NBC’s Quantum Leap launched Season 2 with 2.9 million viewers and a 0.3 rating, up in audience and steady in the demo vs. its freshman averages (2.3 mi/0.3).

After a solid showing for its initial broadcast, The Golden Bachelor continued gathering momentum in the subsequent days — enough to hit a three-year high for the Bachelor franchise in total viewers. The Sept. 28 premiere rose to 7.7 million viewers after three days of cross-platform viewing, a gain of 3.34 million viewers (and almost 77 percent) over its on-air tally of 4.36 million. The episode also more than tripled its adults 18-49 rating, rising from 0.62 for the initial broadcast to 1.9 after three days.

Dancing With the Stars Season 32 premiere last Tuesday jumped to 6.5 million total viewers and recorded a 1.08 rating among adults 18-49 in multiplatform+3 day viewing metrics provided by Nielsen — that’s a growth of 1.72 million in total viewers and by 69% in the key demo.

NBC Sunday Night Football‘s Chiefs-Jets match-up featuring Taylor Swift and a whole entourage of other celebs drew 20.2 million total viewers and a 5.3 demo rating, surging 34% and 23% from last week’s preliminary numbers to mark highs for the nascent season.

ABC‘s The Golden Bachelor seems to have reenergized The Bachelor audience as the show opened to solid ratings on Thursday night, delivering the strongest debut performance from a Bachelor franchise series since 2021.

Taylor Sheridan’s hit drama Yellowstone made its broadcast debut on CBS last week, with an average 6.6 million viewers tuning in to watch the series premiere that first aired on Paramount Network five years ago. That number decreased to a still-solid 5 million with Episode 2 on Sunday night, and it seemed likely that a chunk of the viewers who dropped off — especially from within the 3 million viewers who had never seen the show before — may have opted to stream the show at their own pace on Peacock instead of returning to CBS.

America’s Got Talent‘s season finale just barely led Wednesday in total viewers, while Survivor‘s season opener dominated the night in the demo.

It’s awarded accreditation for accurate and complete verification of national TV ad airings — a foundation for cross-platform ad-based measurement.

As a currency for TV advertising, ratings leave far too much room for inaccuracies. It’s time to speed up the industry’s shift to impressions as the far superior alternative.

Nielsen challengers Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp were granted conditional certification as currency for buying and selling advertising by the U.S. Joint Industry Committee (JIC) set up by media companies to set modern standards for audience measurement in a multiplatform environment.

ABC’s share of Monday Night Football coverage this week averaged a cool 13 million total viewers and a 3.2 demo rating, up sharply from the preliminary numbers (10M/2.1) for last week’s season opener.

Linear TV viewership made somewhat of a comeback in August after dropping to an all-time low in July, Nielsen reported in its latest monthly state of TV report. Combined viewing for broadcast and cable managed to eke back to 50.6% of total TV usage, with broadcast recording its first gain since January. Broadcast accounted for 20.4% of TV usage, which is a 1.4% gain month-over-month. As for cable, it recorded the largest monthly category across all three categories, ballooning 1.7%. Meanwhile streaming saw a bit of a decline to 38.3% but still remained the largest share of television for the month.

Sanitized-for-broadcast or not, a five-year-old Yellowstone episode put up solid numbers for CBS on Sunday night. Leading out of an NFL-delayed 60 Minutes season opener (which, per CBS, drew 11.4 million total viewers), the Kevin Costner drama’s XL series premiere averaged 6.6 million viewers.

Karthik Rao succeeds David Kenny at the top of the ratings firm as competition grows and measurement grows more complex.

ESPN rode its college football coverage to a big ratings win last week in both primetime and total day. The sports network averaged 3.1 million viewers in primetime during the week of Sept. 4-10 to end Fox News’ win streak on the chart at 10 weeks, according to Nielsen figures supplied by Fox News. ESPN was led by its Sept. 9 Texas-Alabama college football telecast, which generated 7.9 million viewers.

NBC Sunday Night Football’s Cowboys/Giants matchup of course dominated Sunday night with 16.4 million total viewers and a 4.9 demo rating — down 12% and 6% from the preliminary numbers for last year’s Bucs/Cowboys Sunday opener. The CW’s The Chosen, with its Season 2 premiere, dipped to an audience of 406,000, while posting a typical 0.0 rating.

The lack of viewership numbers used to feel like freedom, but as streaming evolves to look more like traditional television, creators want to peek behind the curtain.

Fox scored a record audience with its broadcast of Colorado’s win against TCU on Saturday. The football game, which was watched by nearly 7.3M people, was the most-watched telecast of the day on any network. It also set the record for Fox’s most-watched Week 1 Big Noon Saturday matchup ever — up 17% over the program’s 2022 average (an audience of about 6.2M). On Fox Sports’ digital platforms, the game also managed to become the fourth most-streamed college football game in the network’s history.

ESPN scores second place primetime finish.

Move over, Ted Lasso. There’s a new Apple TV+ series making its way onto the Nielsen streaming charts.

Preseason National Football League games dominated the list of most watched live sports events during the last full week of August. Three games from the final week of the NFL preseason landed among the top 10 most-viewed events during the week of August 21-27, including Fox’s  August 27 Houston Texans-New Orleans Saints game, which averaged 4.22 million to lead all sports events, according to Nielsen numbers published by SportsMedia Watch. CBS’s August 25 Detroit Lions- Carolina Panthers telecast finished third with 3.43 million viewers, and ESPN’s August 21 Baltimore Ravens-Washington Commanders game pulled in 2.87 million viewers to place seventh.

Nielsen on Wednesday dismissed the Video Advertising Bureau’s earlier complaints about plans to use first-party data from Amazon to measure viewing of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.

“We recognize this is a period of exceptional change in which all parties are at different stages of their own evolution,” Nielsen CEO of audience measurement business Karthik Rao said in a letter to VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham. “However, the search for perfection risks further delaying the measurement innovations that will ultimately help drive the industry into the future. We believe that our principled, transparent and open approach to integrating first-party data requires all publishers to play by the same rules and will accelerate the industry’s move toward a streaming-first world.”

The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), representing television networks, asked Nielsen not to go forward with its plan to incorporate viewing data from Amazon when coming up with the audience estimates advertisers will use to determine how much they pay for commercials on Thursday Night Football on Amazon’s Prime Video.

NBC’s American Ninja Warrior led Monday in the demo (3.2 million viewers/0.4), while CBS’s NCIS rerun copped the night’s biggest audience (3.4M). On ABC, Claim to Fame‘s two-hour finale averaged 2.25 million total viewers (marking its third-largest audience of the season) and a typical 0.3 demo rating.

Fox News drew more than 12.8 million viewers in its coverage of the first 2024 Republican presidential debate. The figure is the combined audience for Fox News and Fox Business Network, per Nielsen. The number also is well above expectations given the absence of Donald Trump from the stage.

The football season hasn’t officially started yet, and Amazon.com is already on the verge of scoring a touchdown. Nielsen is planning to incorporate viewing data from streaming services for live programming, a move that will likely boost the ratings for Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football package and allow it to charge more for commercials. This is the first time Nielsen has agreed to use a company’s own data along with its independent research to publicly report ratings. It only applies for live programming on streaming services and is open to other streamers as well.

Summer TV broadcast viewing patterns continue to follow that of recent live, linear television trends overall — registering double-digit percentage declines in viewing, with national TV spend also sinking. After nearly two months, season-to-date viewership dropped 25% to average 1.81 million viewers per summer prime-time episode, according to Nielsen’s live program-plus-seven days of time-shifted video-on-demand metric for May 25-Aug. 13.

The 2023 Women’s World Cup has managed record-breaking viewership across the globe. In the U.S., Fox’s coverage was up slightly from 2019, despite several challenges, including frustrating time zone differences and an unexpected early elimination for the USWNT. The average audience for the team U.S. group stage games was the highest it’s ever been at 4.3M viewers (including one overnight game). Even without the USA in the competition, Fox still reported strong audiences throughout the rest of the tournament.

CBS’s Big Brother dominated Wednesday in both total viewers and in the demo with 3.2 million total viewers and a 0.6 demo rating.

NFL Network scores third-place primetime finish with pre-season football games.

MSNBC’s coverage topped out during the 9 p.m. ET hour on Monday, in which The Rachel Maddow Show featured live reports from Georgia as well as a pre-scheduled sitdown interview with Hillary Clinton. Maddow’s show averaged 3.9 million viewers, a big spike from the 2.45 million average viewers Maddow received last month.