Team USA Men’s Hockey Scores, But Olympics Ratings Falter On 2nd Monday

Team USA Men’s Hockey Scores, But Olympics Ratings Falter On 2nd Monday

Team USA is still holding in sixth place in overall medal count at the XXIII Winter Olympics, but its 5-1 hockey victory over Slovakia in the qualifying round on Monday felt like pure gold.

Add to that glow skaters Maia and Alex Shibutani clinching the bronze in the free dance and Brita Sigourney doing the same in freestyle skiing, and the total American medal count is 12, with five of those being gold.

Heading into the final days of competition out of PyeongChang and Sunday’s Closing Ceremony, the ratings for NBC out of these games aren’t going to make it on any podium. Looking on track to be the lowest-rated Olympics ever, with a drop of about 8% from the previous last place of Sochi 2014, the coverage last night presented mixed results.

With a 12.6/21 metered market rating, last night’s Presidents Day primetime coverage on NBC and NBC Sports Network was down 13% from the early numbers of February 12, the first Monday of the 2018 Games. That is not a low for PyoengChang as the hockey saw NBCSN have its best Monday prime since June 2015 and actually represents an overall bop up of 7% from the results of February 18’s primetime NBC and NBCSN airing.

Still, with that breathlessly said, the combo ratings from the two Comcast-owned outlets also saw a 14% drop from the NBC-only primetime coverage of the Sochi Olympics on the comparable night of February 17, 2014.

Having the well-hyped debut of The Tonight Show Fallon 5 as its lead-out, that Monday Olympics broadcast four years ago went on to snare 23.5 million viewers. Facing some actual worthy competition on the other nets, that was the first time that the tape-delayed games out of Russia topped the mainly live 2010 Olympics from Vancouver for the struggling XXII Winter Olympics.

Up against The Bachelor (1.7/6) and Big Brother: Celebrity Edition (1.2/5) on the holiday Monday last night, it appears unlikely we’ll see a similar win in the final numbers today.

As it is, when you just go NBC ’18 to NBC ’14, last night’s metered-market ratings fell 22% from Sochi, one of the harshest drops of these Games so far.

Which looks like it certainly wasn’t a holiday on most of the Big 4 and the CW last night as CBS, ABC and the CW all put some players on the ice against the sliding Olympics. The Bachelor put on a stronger than expected performance with a rise of 13% among adults 18-49 from last week against the South Korea games. Over on the House of Moonves, the Big Brother spinoff was steady with its February 12 show while the partial CBS-owned CW’s DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (0.4/2) was down a tenth from its last original.

We will update with more Olympics numbers later, For now, mull over that last night’s XXIII Winter Olympics coverage spiked to 13.2/21 in the 9-9:15 PM ET slot with women’s freestyle skiing on the main net and ice dancing on NBCSN.