The Winter Olympics kicked off on NBC last night and they scored well for the network while the other network shows held up pretty ok in the face of the competition.
Since the Olympics aired live across the country, the fast nationals aren’t going to be entirely accurate but in metered-market households, NBC scored a 9.3 rating/16 share, down from 11.8 four years ago (a drop of 21 percent, in line with non-sports primetime declines since 2014). Coverage on NBC Sports Network bumped the combined rating up to 11.1, 6 percent below the same night in 2014. Live viewing in the states has the coverage scoring a 3.4 demo rating in the 18-49 and 14.53 million viewers.
Some other shows were down, but not a huge amount: Grey’s Anatomy (2.0, 7.30 million viewers) and Scandal (1.1, 4.63 million viewers) were each off 0.3 vs. last week on ABC, and How to Get Away with Murder (0.8, 3.26 million viewers) fell two tenths of a point. At CBS, Big Brother: Celebrity Edition came down 0.4 from its Wednesday premiere with a 1.4 demo rating and 5.60 million viewers.
Not affected by the Olympics was The CW which had both of its shows hold steady across the board. Supernatural scored a 0.6 demo rating and 1.82 million viewers while Arrow hit a 0.4 demo rating and 1.30 million viewers.
CBS aired repeats for the night while FOX aired the season finale of the recently renewed singing competition, The Four, which was steady with a 1.3 demo rating and 4.03 million viewers.
