NBC, CBS Both Drop 9.5% In Viewers, 'SNF' Tops 19M

by Wayne Friedman , October 26, 2022

Through four weeks of the new TV season, the average broadcast network prime-time show is down 6.5% to 4.93 million viewers looking at Nielsen's measure of live program-plus-seven days of time-shifted viewing.

Both NBC and CBS -- the top two viewing networks -- have dropped 9.5% to 7.31 million and 6.81 million viewers, respectively.

NBC has the highest-rated TV series "Sunday Night Football" -- 19.0 million viewers, down 6% from a year ago through four telecasts. Its top-rated non-sport TV program “Chicago Fire” (9.5 million) and “Chicago Med” (8.7 million).

CBS' highest-rated series are “Blue Bloods” (at 9.7 million) and “FBI” (at 9.6 million).

ABC is the only major TV network to see a gain from a year ago -- up 13% -- 5.03 million. ABC has run two “Monday Night Football” games so far -- one earning 12.9 million and 10.2 million. It didn’t have any games a year ago.

On the flip side, Fox is down 24% to 3.86 million. It does not have the “Thursday Night Football” package this year. Last year, it had two “TNF” games averaging 14.6 million viewers.

“911” (7.4 million viewers) and “The Masked Singer” (5.4 million) are Fox best non-sport TV shows

The CW is down 2% to 680,882 viewers in the Nielsen L7 measure: “Walker” (1.34 million) and “Winchesters” (1.29 million) are its best rate shows.

audience measurement, broadcasting, football, media measurement, nielsen, ratings, sports, television, time shifting

1 comment about "NBC, CBS Both Drop 9.5% In Viewers, 'SNF' Tops 19M".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, October 27, 2022 at 1:47 p.m.
More bad news for the broadcast TV networks, Wayne---but it's not as bad as it looks. The numbers cited are Nielsen "average commercial minute viewers" which do not take into account those who watched the program but zapped the commercials or those who watched the program for only five or ten minutes, but not all of it. Of course those who only saw portions of an episode are factored into the average minute tallies---but at greatly reduced numerical weight due to their reduced time spent with the program. So if the average prime time show reached 5 million viewers per commercial minute its actual audience per commercial minute might be 7 million and if we count those who watched at least five minutes of the episode but not necessarily all of it, the figure probably rises to about 9-10 million---or double the "average commercial minute audience". Consequently from a TV programmer's point of view these shows have a much bigger reach than the average commercial minute data indicates.
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