UPDATED: The first Wednesday coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics drew a total of 19.2 million viewers across platforms, according to total audience delivery data. That is down from the 20.8 million who tuned into the comparable day’s coverage of the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the lowest viewership haul since competition began this year.
17 million viewers came from NBC alone with the rest coming from NBC Sports and the various NBC digital platforms that streamed coverage of the Games. NBC Sports Digital delivered an average minute audience of 237,000 for Wednesday night’s coverage. In addition, NBC Sports Digital has now streamed 862 million live minutes of coverage, more than doubling the 420 million live streaming minutes for the full 2014 Sochi Olympics.
PREVIOUSLY: The first Wednesday primetime coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics from Pyeongchang, South Korea, fell to a new low in the Nielsen ratings.
In metered market households, Wednesday’s coverage drew a combined 13.1 rating on NBC and NBC Sports. That is the lowest rating in that measure for the official competition of the 2018 Games thus far. The training and qualifying rounds that aired on Feb. 8 ultimately drew an 11. 1 rating, though the opening ceremony did not take place until Feb. 9.
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Wednesday’s coverage is also down slightly from the 13.2 rating drawn by the comparable coverage of the Sochi Olympics in 2014, though that aired only on NBC.
In the fast affiliate ratings, which are not time zone adjusted, Wednesday’s coverage of the Games on NBC alone drew a 4.0 rating in adults 18-49 and 17.1 million viewers. Those numbers do not include West Coast viewers or those who watched on NBC Sports or any of NBC’s digital platforms. Total audience delivery data will be available later today.
Again, very few originals aired on broadcast against the Olympics.
On CBS, “Big Brother: Celebrity Edition” (1.3, 5.2 million) was even with its last original episode on Monday but down in both measures from the premiere last Wednesday. “The Amazing Race” (0.9, 4.1 million) was also down.
On ABC, a new episode of “Match Game” (0.5, 2.2 million) was also down in both measures.
The CW aired the specials “Relationshps Just for Laughs” (0.2, 0.79 million) and “The Top 14 Greatest Valentine’s Day Movies of All Time” (0.2, 0.67 million).
