Posted in: TV | Tagged: ABC, cbs, cw, entertainment, fox, HRL, nbc, television

NBC Leads the First Quarter Ratings for the New Season

Published Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:25:36 -0600

Taking a look at the ratings for the first 12 weeks of the fall season and comparing them to previous years, NBC has won again for the sixth season in a row. According to TVLine, the network is led by their highest-rated program, Sunday Night Football, as well as the top drama series This Is Us and the top reality series The Voice. It is also home to the number three comedy, Will & Grace. The network averaged a 2.4 rating in the 18-49 demo looking at Live+DVR date.

Fox comes in second with 1.8, CBS third with 1.7, ABC is fourth with 1.5 and finally the CW with 0.7. Where all of that sounds good for NBC and kind of bad for the CW… it flips changes around when you look at the year to year comparison. Fox has had the biggest drop, 18% down from last year. ABC drops 17%, CBS 15% and NBC is down only 11% from 2016… but the CW held steady. This means that the little network filled with superhero shows has retained almost all of its audience from last year.

Things change up a little bit more when you look at the total audience numbers. They don't matter for ad sales, but for overall popularity they speak volumes. CBS comes in first here with 9.8 million viewers with NBC a close second at 9.2 million. It's a big drop to ABC at 6.3 million and Fox at 6 million, and another drop down to the CW at 1.9 million.

Bottom line: CBS has the most eyeballs, NBC has the big percent of the viewers advertisers want, and the CW is the most consistent performer compared to last year.

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