While ratings for the Rio Olympics are down overall compared with the 2012 London games, viewers were decidedly glued to their screens as Michael Phelps took his final Olympic swim.
NBC dominated primetime on Saturday, attracting 26.8 million viewers, earning a 15.0 rating. That’s up by 14 percent from the games’ opening Saturday last week. (See the chart below.)
NBC earned an 8.0 primetime rating in the coveted demographic of adults aged 18 to 49. That’s five times the combined rating of the other Big 4 networks (1.6 on ABC, CBS and Fox) — and counts as the largest advantage in the first nine days of any Olympics on record, according to NBC.