’60 Minutes’ was the top-ranked non-Olympic program last week and the only program to average more than 6 million viewers.
The CBS News magazine averaged 6.975 million viewers, the fifth of primetime programs that aired between February 14 and Sunday, according to live-plus-same-day numbers released by Nielsen on Wednesday. It marked the 11th time in the 22-week 2021-22 television season that it was the top-rated non-sports program.
NBC’s Winter Olympics programming accounted for 10 of the top 11 programs, with the February 15 broadcast of the women’s short figure skating program finishing first for the week, averaging 8.711 million viewers.
NBC averaged 7.23 million viewers for its primetime schedule that was almost exclusively for the Olympics, 49% less than the average of 14.19 million for the final week of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. NBC’s only non-Olympic prime -time program for the week was the half-hour premiere of “America’s Got Talent: Extreme” which drew an average of 3.111 million viewers after Sunday’s closing ceremony, ranking 38th for the week.
NBC averaged 10.7 million viewers for the 18 nights of the Winter Olympics, 40% less than the previous record of 17.8 million for the Pyeongchang Games. What NBC called the Total Audience Delivery — which includes cable and digital viewers — was 11.4 million, 42.4% less than the 19.8 million figure for the Pyeongchang Games.
Viewership for nearly all broadcast and cable programs has declined compared to the past, primarily due to the increased viewership of streaming programs, including those originally broadcast on traditional television.
CBS finished second this week with an average of 3 million viewers, followed by ABC with an average of 2.65 million. Fox averaged 1.99 million and The CW averaged 330,000.
Fox’s ratings were the post-race Daytona 500 show with an average of 5.423 million viewers, 14th for the week, and the procedural drama, “9-1-1: Lone Star”, 15th for the week with an average of 4.952 million. viewers.
Four episodes of “Jeopardy! National College Championship” topped ABC’s rankings, with Thursday’s episode leading the way, ranking 16th of the week, averaging 4.817 million viewers.
A rerun of the unscripted magic competition series “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” was The CW’s biggest draw, averaging 576,000 viewers, 179th of the programs it aired. The overall ranking was not available.
The top 20 prime-time programs consisted of 11 NBC Olympics programs; “60 Minutes”, “Price is Right at Night” and a rerun of “Young Sheldon” on CBS; Fox’s Daytona 500 post-race show and “9-1-1: Lone Star”; three episodes of “Jeopardy! National College Championship” on ABC and coverage of the NBA All-Star Game on TNT and TBS.
Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game topped prime-time cable ratings, averaging 6.284 million viewers on TNT and TBS, 12th overall for the week. The audience was 5.7% larger than the combined record-low audience among the available figures of 5.943 million for the 2021 All-Star Game.
Fox News Channel won the cable network race for the fifth consecutive week after placing four consecutive runners-up behind ESPN, averaging 2.423 million viewers. TNT came in second with an average of 2.013 million. MSNBC came in third for the seventh consecutive week, averaging 1.047 million.
CNN was ranked 16th, two places up from the previous week, with an average of 573,000 viewers, 20.4% more than the previous week’s 476,000 viewers.
CNN also tracked HGTV (1.08 million), Hallmark Channel (968,000), USA Network (950,000), History (921,000), TLC (889,000), ESPN (829,000), Food Network (699,000), Discovery (683,000), TBS (656,000), Paramount Network (637,000), Lifetime (593,000), and Investigation Discovery (581,000).
The top 20 prime-time cable shows were: NBA All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Saturday Night, and the two-hour, 21-minute “NBA Tip-Off” pregame show on TNT; 14 Fox News Channel political talk shows — five broadcasts of both “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” and four of “The Ingraham Angle”; the Hallmark Channel movie “The Wedding Veil Legacy”; The long-running chronicle of a treasure hunt on a Canadian island, “The Curse of Oak Island”; and the TLC series about couples who have bonded online but haven’t met in person, “90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days.”
“The Tinder Swindler” was the most-streamed English-language film on Netflix for the third straight week, with viewers spending 34.45 million hours watching the true crime documentary in its second full week of release, according to figures released by the streaming service. .
Netflix’s most popular television program for the second consecutive week was “Inventing Anna,” with viewers spending 195.97 million hours watching the first full week of release.
Viewership was up 153.49% from the 77.31 million hours watched last week, when the nine-episode series about a reporter (Anna Chlumsky) investigating an Instagram-legendary German heiress (Julia Garner ) who captured the hearts of New York’s social scene and their money was available for three days.