After surpassing the corresponding night from the 2014 Olympics for the first time, NBCUniversal Media LLC's prime-time presentation from Pyeongchang on Feb. 21 retreated, recording the second-lowest of the 2018 Winter Games.
Cable network NBCSN (US), meanwhile, netted the most-watched late-night program in its history with coverage of the gold-medal women’s hockey game.
The Feb. 21 Total Audience Delivery, or TAD — measuring average-minute watching on NBC (US), NBCSN and digital platforms, NBCOlympics.com and NBC Sport app — for prime time was 16.4 million viewers. That trailed NBC's 20.2 million average audience by 19% — there was no concurrent cable or digital coverage in prime time during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — for the corresponding night four years ago.
The Feb. 21 TAD performance was NBCU's second-lowest of the 2018 Olympics, only exceeding the 16.1 million average on Saturday, Feb. 17.
NBC averaged 14.1 million viewers on Feb. 21, according to data from Nielsen Holdings, its lowest mark of the Pyeongchang competition. NBCSN chipped in some 2.2 million watchers, as NBC/NBCSN viewership peaked at 17.9 million viewers in the 10 p.m. ET quarter hour for women’s alpine skiing. The digital entries scored an average minute audience of 164,000, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
All told, TAD provided a 16% bump over NBC’s telecast, marking the 12th consecutive night of double-digit TAD lift.
On Feb. 20, TAD tallied 20.5 million viewers, including 17.5 million watchers on NBC. That total from Pyeongchang surpassed the 18.9 million that watched the corresponding second Tuesday night Olympic coverage from Sochi on the broadcast network four years ago. The Feb. 20 TAD average marks the only time in the games from South Korea so far that eclipsed the delivery from the same night in Russia — the 19.2 million TAD average on Friday Feb. 16, matched the second Friday in 2014.
NBC Olympics said that through the first 14 nights from Pyeongchang, the TAD has averaged 20.8 million viewers, an 11% boost above NBC’s 18.5 million average. The 2018 opening ceremony from South Korea, like its counterpart from Russia four years earlier, aired only on NBC. Still, the broader Pyeongchang coverage trails the 22.6 million NBC-only average from Sochi by 8% over the first two weeks.
Team USA's win over Canada in the women’s hockey medal game on Feb. 21 scored a TAD of 3.7 million across platforms. The NBCSN-only telecast averaged 2.9 million viewers, the largest audience for the cable network in the 11 p.m. to 2:15 a.m. late-night window to date, according to NBCU.
With 525,000 unique watchers of the live stream, the women’s gold medal game ranks as NBC Sports Digital’s fifth-largest hockey audience, behind four contests from Sochi, during more time-friendly morning and afternoon presentations.