While we have a couple more days before the holidays fully take over, festive programming, from grand linear specials like NBC’s “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” and ABC’s “The Wonderful World of Disney: Holiday Spectacular” to reruns of beloved Christmas movies, has already boosted ratings this month.
It kicked off to a promising start as the 2025 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade scored another all-time viewership high with 34.3 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, which ticked up to 36 million when including the Telemundo broadcast.
NBC continued its holiday special run with its annual “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” and “Christmas in Nashville,” which scored 6.1 million and 3.9 million viewers, respectively, as the specials aired on Dec. 3, according to live-plus-same-day Nielsen big data plus panel figures.
Likewise, ABC’s 10th annual “The Wonderful World of Disney: Holiday Spectacular,” which was hosted by Derek Hough and aired on Dec. 1, scored 3.1 million total viewers and a rating of 0.32 in the key demo among adults 18-49, per live-plus-three-day viewing figures, while “Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas,” scored 4.9 million total viewers and a 0.26 rating according to live-plus-three-day figures following its airing on Dec. 9.
ABC also noted ratings wins with its lineup of holiday-centric specials on Dec. 2, which kicked off with a “Dancing With the Stars” special, “Dancing with the Holidays,” scoring 5.2 million viewers and a 0.65 rating, becoming the No. 1 holiday-themed special across the broadcast networks among adults 18-49 in two years. Next up was the annual “CMA Country Christmas” special, which scored 3.90 million total viewers and a 0.34 rating, the night’s highest-rated show during the 9 p.m. hour, as well as the holiday special of “What Would You Do?” at 10 p.m., which rose over its regular season average with total viewers up 40% and demo viewers up 19%.
Like years past, Freeform’s annual 25 Days of Christmas broadcasts holiday movie favorites since Dec. 1, with the network’s airings scoring more top 25 telecasts than any other network across several demos in the first 14 days of December, including adults 18-49 and women 19-49, where Freeform has delivered 19 top 25 telecasts; as well as adults 18-34 and women 18-34, where the network has grabbed 16 placements in the top 25, according to Nielsen big data plus panel numbers. Of their festive lineup, Freeform has claimed the two top movie airings of December to date among adults 18-49, with the Dec. 1 airing of “Home Alone” at 6 p.m. ranking as the top movie while “The Santa Clause 3,” which aired earlier that day at 4 p.m. ranked second.
The boost of holiday movie viewing can be seen even earlier than December on the streaming side, with Jim Carrey’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” popping up in Nielsen’s top 10 streaming movies list in early November, with 253 million streaming minutes logged on Peacock during the week of Nov. 3 and 290 million minutes tallied up the following week.
Rather than library favorites showing up in Netflix’s top 10 movie list, however, the streamer saw notable viewership towards its new slate of 2025 holiday movies, including “A Merry Little Ex-Mas,” “Champagne Problems” “Jingle Bell Heist” and “My Secret Santa,” most of which brought in almost as impressive numbers as last year’s arguably buzzier slate. More on Netflix’s recipe for holiday movies here.
And some of the best is yet to come for linear holiday specials, with ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” and CBS’ “New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash” taking over the end of the year, while the annual Rose Bowl parade airs on NBC and Peacock on New Year’s Day.
CBS primetime lineup holds strong
The Paramount-owned broadcaster held onto its spot as the top broadcast network for the 12th week of the broadcast season in total viewers, including sports, soaring ahead of NBC by 400,000 viewers, boosted by its primetime lineup. During the week of Dec. 8, CBS had the top eight most-watched non-sports broadcast of the week, including “60 Minutes” with 10.2 million viewers, “Tracker” with 7.6 million viewers and “NCIS” with 5.9 million viewers.
Notably, “Matlock’s” fall finale scored a Thursday season high of 5 million viewers, while “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” scored a season high of 4.8 million viewers and 2.8 million viewers, respectively.
Los Angeles Rams victory over the Detroit Lions boosts the NFL on Fox
Sunday’s Rams-Lions game scored 19.4 million viewers, rising 19% over last year’s Week 15 game, which scored 16.4 million viewers. To date, Fox’s “America’s Game of the Week” is averaging 25.4 million viewers — up 5% compared to last year’s average — while the NFL on Fox is averaging 20.1 million viewers — up 8% over last year’s average.
“Stranger Things” gears up for a grand finale
With the dust settled from the staggering debut of “Stranger Things” Season 5 Volume 1, which scored the biggest premiere week for an English language show in Netflix history with 59.6 million views in its first five days, fans are still catching up ahead of the second drop on Christmas Day and the grand finale on New Year’s Eve. While Season 5 sank down to 11.2 million views in its third week on the streamer, all five seasons have been in the top 10 list for the past three weeks.
If the Volume 1 debut is any indication, we’re expecting a pretty enormous debut for the final two releases once “Stranger Things” concludes its five-season run. We’ll dive into the numbers more closely when “Inside the Ratings” returns after the holidays.
