More Nielsen gold during NBC’s final Olympics week

NEW YORK (AP) - NBC is celebrating its final golden week of Olympics coverage, which for another round yielded the seven most-watched telecasts, plus a bonus: An eighth prime-time broadcast from Sochi, aired Sunday, also landed in last week’s Top 10.

Nielsen says Monday was NBC’s biggest night, seen by more than 23.6 million viewers to be the week’s No. 1 program.

The least-followed Olympics coverage, on Saturday, placed seventh for the week, drawing 13.2 million viewers.

“Sochi Gold,” aired prior to Sunday’s closing ceremonies, ranked ninth with 12.7 million viewers.

In eighth place: AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” with 13.1 million viewers.

Overall for the week in prime time, NBC averaged 17.7 million viewers, a drop from the previous week’s 21.2 million.

Far behind, CBS and Fox tied with 6.1 million viewers apiece, followed by ABC with 4.2 million. Univision had 3.4 million, ION Television had 1.2 million, Telemundo had 980,000 and the CW had 920,000 viewers.

The week’s top-rated cable networks in prime time were USA with 2.37 million, Disney Channel with 1.88 million and TBS with 1.81 million viewers.

Propelled by NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, the network’s Sochi-based “Nightly News” led the evening newscasts more than usual with an average of 10.4 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.0 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.1 million viewers.

For the week of Feb. 17, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Winter Olympics (Monday), NBC, 23.55 million; Winter Olympics (Thursday), NBC, 20.29 million; Winter Olympics (Wednesday), NBC, 20.19 million; Winter Olympics (Tuesday), NBC, 18.93 million; Winter Olympics Closing Ceremonies, NBC, 15.18 million; Winter Olympics (Friday), NBC, 14.93 million; Winter Olympics (Saturday), NBC, 13.28 million; “The Walking Dead,” AMC, 13.12 million; “Sochi Gold” (Sunday), NBC, 12.72 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 10.16 million.

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ABC and Disney Channel are owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC, USA and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. AMC is owned by AMC Networks.

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Online:

https://www.nielsen.com