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 in the XXIII Winter Olympics, but the 5-1 hockey victory over Slovakia yesterday in the qualifying round felt like pure gold.

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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 February 25’s closing ceremony, the ratings for NBC out of these games are pretty clearly not going to be making it on to 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 the 2018 Games, 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 Starring Jimmy Fallon as its lead-out, that Monday Olympics broadcast of over 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 and Big Brother: Celebrity Edition on the holiday Monday of 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.

We will update with more Olympics numbers plus that of the rest of primetime, including the CW’s DC’s Legends of Tomorrow 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 & ice dancing on NBCSN.