Houston’s Olympic TV ratings take a big leap with Biles, Manuel
NBC fell considerably short of its primetime delivery hopes for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, but the presence of Simone Biles and Simone Manuel helped keep viewership steady in Houston and vaulted the city’s ranking from 45th in 2012 to 17th in 2016.
KPRC (Channel 2) averaged a 16.1 Nielsen rating in prime time for all 17 nights of telecasts, including the lower-than-expected Opening Ceremony and Closing Ceremony. That was down from 16.8 in 2012, according to NBC, but Houston jumped almost 30 spots in the rankings among the 56 major markets, many of which suffered larger drops in viewership this year.
Channel 2 three times had more than 700,000 viewers in prime time, and each featured a Simone — Biles for the women’s team final on Aug. 7 (726,000 viewers) and the all-around final on Aug. 9 (820,000 viewers) and both Simones on Aug. 11, when Biles won vault gold and Manuel won gold in the 100-meter freestyle (841,000).
For comparison purposes, the Aug. 11 show would have ranked among the top 25 most-watched sports events of 2015, even surpassing a handful of Texans games.
Salt Lake City was the top-ranked market, with a 20.4 Nielsen rating, followed by Denver at 19.1, Indianapolis at 18.1 and Austin at 18.0.
Overall, though, the numbers fell under NBC’s hopes for its prime-time, over-the-air telecasts, although the network did trumpet its total viewership as “the most successful media event in history.”
The network separated out the lightly watched ceremonies and noted that the 15 nights of competition averaged 27.5 million viewers, less than the 30.3 million for London but more than for any non-domestic Olympics on NBC.
NBC did experience unquestioned growth in streaming. The network said viewers streamed 2.71 billion minutes, nearly doubling the combined totals for the last three Olympics where events were streamed, and totaled 100 million unique users.