NBC audience soars with first full week of Olympics Games

NEW YORK — You don’t need to be a numbers-cruncher to guess what won the ratings race last week — and why.

With blanket coverage of the Rio Games, NBC had the ratings game all to itself in prime time, scoring the top seven slots (Tuesday, Thursday, Monday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday and Friday) by a mile while crushing its network rivals.

The network led with an average of 28.2 million viewers, trailed waaayyyyyy back by CBS with 3.6 million and ABC with 2.7 million, according to Nielsen figures. Spanish-language networks Univision (with 1.6 million) and Telemundo (1.4 million) both topped Fox, which barely had a pulse with 1.2 million. ION Television drew 1.1 million, followed by CW with 900,000 viewers.

Meanwhile, the Olympics-coverage setting gave NBC a nice bump in the evening-news race, which is usually neck-and-neck between NBC and ABC. NBC’s “Nightly News” was decisively on top with 10.4 million viewers, followed by ABC’s “World News Tonight” with 7.9 million. The “CBS Evening News” had 6.2 million.

NBC was crowing Tuesday that this, its seventh straight week at No. 1 in viewership, equals the network’s longest winning streak in 19 years.

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Among cable networks in prime time last week, Fox News Channel took the lead with 1.8 million viewers, followed by Disney Channel with 1.5 million.

For the week of Aug. 8-14, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Summer Olympic Games (Tuesday), NBC, 33.4 million; Summer Olympic Games (Thursday), NBC, 31.2 million; Summer Olympic Games (Monday), NBC, 28.9 million; Summer Olympic Games (Sunday), NBC, 26.8 million; Summer Olympic Games (Wednesday), NBC, 26.5 million; Summer Olympic Games (Saturday), NBC, 25.5 million; Summer Olympic Games (Friday), NBC, 24.0 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 6.0 million; “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 5.9 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 5.8 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and Fox News Channel are owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

Frazier Moore, The Associated Press