Still haven’t seen the full overnight detail for Saturday night and I may not until Monday morning, but James Hibberd reports some pretty stellar overnight numbers for NBC for the primetime portion of Saturday night.
Saturday’s overnight local-market household average was a 16.6 rating (30 share), which is up 12% from Athens in 2004. Now that’s not nearly as great of percentage leap as the Beijing opening ceremony had over Athens (27%), but it still ranks as the highest first-night of summer off-shore Olympic competition since Barcelona in 1992.
I don’t feel impaired by the lack of additional data, we can be sure that’s better than everything else that was on last night. By way of comparison, the American Idol season finale in May did a 17.7/28 (household rating/share), which is better than the Olympics last night in terms of households viewing, so for now David Archuletta vs. David Cook did a little better than Michael Phelps vs. the world, but for a Saturday night programming that wasn’t the NFL, it’s an outstanding performance and better than I expected. In my estimation, not merely good, but great.
You can read the rest of Hibberd’s post, with links to other Olympics info here.
Saturdays ratings were, I am sure, sparked by the LIVE coverage of the swimmong events, along with Phelps getting his first of a possible 8 gold medals.
BTW, Will we get any ratings for the NBC Daytime coverage and all the cable outlets coverage, on a daily basis?
WOW! these Olympics are on record pace to be the most watched in history. Saturday night does have an audience and it needs to be utilized for scripted shows by the networks in the future.
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