Thursday Olympics Coverage Ticks Up Slightly From Wednesday Lows, Matches First Night Of Competition

The 2022 Winter Olympics, now three Thursdays into competition, are back where they started ratings-wise.

Despite the drama unfolding on ice with Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s doping controversy, Thursday brought NBC’s primetime coverage of the Beijing games up only ever so slightly. Per fast affiliates, the latest night of coverage brought in a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demo and 7.43 million viewers, up from Wednesday’s lows (1.1, 6.16M). That said, the third Thursday was also significantly down from the previous week (1.9, 9.86M) to match the very first night of competition to a tee (1.2, 7.39M). Coverage also included women’s speed skating 1000m and women’s halfpipe skiing final.

For the corresponding day of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, NBC recorded a total audience delivery of 17.6 million viewers. This post will be updated with Thursday’s TAD when those become available. The 2022 Winter Olympics, which have sturggled to match previous games’ ratings, will end Sunday, February 20.

Outside of the Olympics, Jeopardy! National College Championship (0.6, 4.61M) was the second-highest rated primetime title for the second consecutive week. Also returning for a new episode was Fox’s Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer (0.3, 1.58M) which was stable from the previous week.

For the rest of the evening, Fox was the only one bringing fresh content with new installments fo Call Me Kat (0.3, 1.63M) and Pivoting (0.2. 1.02M), which were both steady. Once again, The CW and CBS were in repeats.