• by Wayne Friedman , September 19, 2019

With less than a week to go before the new TV season starts, a look back at the entire 2018-2019 TV season shows NBC and CBS continuing to sit firmly at the top of key Nielsen viewing metrics -- although with some declines.

NBC is down 22% to a Nielsen 1.4 rating among 18- to-49-year-olds from September 24, 2018 through September 15, 2019, per the measurement company’s live program-plus seven days of time-shifted viewing metric, with live program-plus-same day for the most current weeks.

A year ago, for the 2017-2018 TV season, NBC aired two major TV events -- the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics.

CBS’ performance with total viewers was much better this past season -- thanks to the network's airing of the Super Bowl this past February. It dropped just 2% in overall viewership to 7.4 million viewers.

After NBC in the race for the 18-49 viewing crown come CBS, Fox, and ABC -- all tied with a 1.2 rating, followed by the CW, Telemundo, and Univision, all tied at a 0.4 number.

CBS and ABC were down 8% in viewing versus a year ago, and Fox was flat. Fox added the highly rated “Thursday Night Football” this season.

The CW, Telemundo, and Univision are down 20% from their respective 0.5 numbers for the same period a year ago.

NBC also lost ground in total viewers this year -- down 15% to 6.5 million. ABC slipped 5% to 5.2 million, while Fox was up 10% to 4.5 million, Univision was off 13% to 1.3 million, The CW was down 20% to 1.2 million and Telemundo was even at 1.2 million.

The 2019-2020 TV season begins Monday, September 23.