Date: 27th September 2000

NBC Leaps With Olympics Ratings.


In one fell swoop, NBC last week moved from the third-rated network for the season to the second-rated, thanks entirely to its Olympic Games coverage, which clobbered the competition last week.

While the overall audience for the Sydney telecasts was disappointingly smaller than predicted, it was nevertheless big enough to give the network the best numbers of any network since Super Bowl week, 1998, according to Daily Variety ratings analyst Rick Kissell.

For the week, NBC garnered a 16.1 rating and a 26 share. ABC finished second with a 6.8/11, followed by CBS with a 5.5/9 and Fox with a 5.0/8.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research:

1. Summer Olympics (Sunday), NBC, 16.1/26; 2. Summer Olympics (Tuesday), NBC, 15.5/26; 3. Summer Olympics (Friday), NBC, 15.0/27; 4. Summer Olympics (Thursday), NBC, 14.9/26; 5. Summer Olympics (Wednesday), NBC, 14.6/25; 6. Summer Olympics (Monday), NBC, 13.8/23; 7. NFL Monday Night Football, ABC, 13.5/23; 8. Summer Olympics (Saturday), NBC, 13.5/25; 9. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Tuesday), ABC, 12.4/20; 10. Millionaire (Thursday), ABC, 10.6/16.

Source: Studio Briefing