It is Fox’s turn to raise the (Lombardi?) trophy, as the youngest-skewing of the so-called “Big 4” broadcast networks has won the 52-week September-to-September season in primetime TV ratings among adults 18-49, which is the most heavily coveted age-range for advertisers.
Here’s how the September 13, 2019 through September 22, 2020 “season” panned out in primetime’s key-demo ratings, according to Nielsen. Fox, buoyed by Super Bowl LIV and the success of “The Masked Singer,” claimed the top spot over NBC, CBS and ABC.
1. Fox: 1.3 rating
2. NBC: 1.1 rating
3. CBS and ABC (tied): 0.9 rating(s)
Those numbers, as well as the below viewership statistics, come from Nielsen’s “most current” ratings data set, which includes one week of delayed viewing for the vast majority of these 52 weeks.
While Nielsen has not yet produced the past few weeks of DVR viewing (and technically we still have like nine days left in the 52-week season), we’ve got more than a large enough sample size to call a winner.
While CBS settled for a third-place tie in the key demo for primetime, the appropriately self-nicknamed “America’s Most-Watched Network” repeated its long dominance in total viewers. In fact, network was tops in overall viewership in all three day parts — primetime, daytime and late night — winning what it calls the “ratings trifecta” for the second year in a row.
In primetime, CBS averaged 6.32 million viewers, topping second-place finisher NBC by more than 700,000 viewers. The famously older-skewing network has secured it’s spot as the most-watched network for the 11th time in 12 years. Here’s how the rest of the rankings break down:
1. CBS: 6.32 million
2. NBC 5.59 million
3. Fox 4.81 million
4. ABC 4.65 million
In late night, CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” continued its four-year winning streak, beating NBC’s “The Tonight Show” by 48,000 viewers in the demo and 1.52 million viewers overall. Combined with James Corden’s “Late Late Show,” CBS’s total late-night viewership (2.30 million viewers) topped that of both NBC (1.62 million) and ABC (1.68 million).
Similarly, CBS’s daytime offerings beat its closest competitor ABC’s by a total of 1.25 million viewers (3.46 million vs. 2.21 million).