Nbc’s Olympian Effort Pays Off In Nielsen Ratings

NBC’s first full week of Olympics coverage yielded historic Nielsen ratings for the Games.

For the week of July 22-28, the nightly coverage represented TV’s seven highest-rated programs and a 21 percent increase over the ‘92 Games in Barcelona.

On Sunday alone, top-ranked NBC had 103 million viewers - the second time the Atlanta Games exceeded the 100 million mark - for the highest-rated, prime-time Olympics Sunday since the closing ceremonies of the ‘84 Games in Los Angeles.

Overall, NBC obliterated its competition with a 23.4 rating and a 42 percent share of all TV sets tuned in to prime time. That was more than double NBC’s season-to-date average, an 11.6 rating, 20 share.

CBS, having held second place for a month by mere tenths of a point, beat ABC by a half-point, with a 6.2 rating, 11 share, to ABC’s 5.7 rating, 10 share.

The Fox Broadcasting Co., exempt from major-network regulation by airing only 15 hours of prime-time programming, earned a 3.7 rating, 7 share. The Olympics also helped “NBC Nightly News” knock ABC’s “World News Tonight” out of first place for the first time since the week of Feb. 21, 1994, when CBS’ Winter Olympics pushed “The CBS Evening News” to No. 1.

NBC’s newscast earned an 8.0 rating, 19 share, while ABC had a 7.7 rating, 16 share. The CBS telecast had a 6.4 rating, 14 share.

Prime-time ratings as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for July 22-28. Listings include the week’s ranking, with season-to-date rankings in parentheses, rating for the week and total homes.

An “X” in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation. A rating measures the percentage of the nation’s 95.9 million TV homes. Each ratings point represents 959,000 households.

1. (X) “Summer Olympics - Tuesday,” NBC, 27.2, 26.1 million homes.

2. (X) “Summer Olympics - Thursday,” NBC, 26.8, 25.7 million homes.

3. (X) “Summer Olympics - Sunday,” NBC, 23.4, 22.4 million homes.

4. (X) “Summer Olympics - Monday,” NBC, 22.9, 22.0 million homes.

5. (X) “Summer Olympics - Wednesday,” NBC, 22.4, 21.5 million homes.

6. (X) “Summer Olympics - Saturday,” NBC, 19.4, 18.6 million homes.

7. (X) “Summer Olympics - Friday,” NBC, 17.9, 17.2 million homes.

8. (8) “Home Improvement,” ABC, 9.1, 8.7 million homes.

9. (9) “60 Minutes,” CBS, 9.0, 8.6 million homes.

10. (X) “ABC Monday Night Movie: The Tommyknockers, Part 2,” 8.2, 7.9 million homes.

10. (14) “Coach,” ABC, 8.2, 7.9 million homes.