Nielsen: Olympic Boost for Summer Viewership

The 2024 Paris Olympics boosted television viewing in August, according to Nielsen, especially broadcast, which was up 8 percent on the previous month and 11.7 percent on the same period last year.

Overall, broadcast landed a 22 percent share of viewing in August. Across all of NBC’s Olympics telecasts, 32 had more than 5 million viewers, and 17 garnered more than 10 million viewers. Peacock was the digital home of the summer Olympics and it too benefited, with monthly viewership up 39 percent. Peacock scored a platform-best 2.1 percent share of viewing in August.

Cable also saw gains thanks to event programming. Nielsen highlighted coverage of the Democratic National Convention; that week, cable’s share of television climbed to almost 28 percent. Overall, cable’s share was 26.3 percent.

Streaming, meanwhile, which has been setting new benchmarks for the last few months, remains on top at 41 percent, even though that was down 1 percent. Only one streaming original made it to the top ten—Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy—with the rest being acquisitions, among them Prison Break on Netflix and Paramount+ and Bluey on Disney+.