National TV Spending Falls 11% Summer-To-Date, Live Broadcast Viewing Drops 25%

Summer TV broadcast viewing patterns continue to follow that of recent live, linear television trends overall -- registering double-digit percentage declines in viewing, with national TV spend also sinking.

After nearly two months, season-to-date viewership dropped 25% to average 1.81 million viewers per summer prime-time episode, according to Nielsen’s live program- plus-seven days of time-shifted video-on-demand metric for the period from May 25-August 13.

Summer prime-time episodes averaged 2.4 million a year ago.

Some perennial top non-scripted series continue to hold their own this year. Through 10 episodes, NBC’s leading summer show “America’s Got Talent” is down 6% to 7.3 million viewers versus 7.8 million a year ago.

CBS show “Big Brother” is next among the summer reality shows, falling 12% to averaging 4.2 million, with 4.4 million viewers on Wednesdays, 4.1 million on Sundays  and 4.0 million on Thursdays.

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ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud” numbers are more in line with overall broadcast summer viewing trends -- down 24% to 3.9 million (5.1 million a year ago). This is also the the case for ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” which sank 21% to 3.1 million, while ABC’s “The $100,000 Pyramid” was off 17% to 3.4 million.

NBC’s scripted drama “The Blacklist” after seven episodes -- which will soon end its original, live linear TV run after 10 seasons -- came in at 4.1 million.

NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” is one of the rare original summer shows to show an improvement versus a year ago. After nine episodes this season, it is up 15% to 3.7 million viewers (3.2 million in 2022, through 10 episodes).

ABC’s “The Chase" through four episodes this year also grew, 21% to 3.4 million.

National TV summer advertising revenue during the May 25-August 13 period was down 11% $2.27 billion collectively, looking at five English-language TV networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and the CW), according to EDO Ad EnGage -- compared to $2.54 billion a year ago.

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