A bounce-back night for NBC in Olympics ratings

The “total audience delivery” figure, the Associated Press reports, is a statistic NBC hurriedly invented when it saw sharp declines in its traditional ratings for the first couple of nights of the Rio de Janeiro Games. Prior to Monday night, Rio was pacing far lower than the London Olympic.

Olympics cable ratings haven’t been as big a boon for NBC as they were with the London Games in 2012. The 11.9 prime-time rating in the 18-49 demo is also a Rio high, up 15.5 percent from Monday.

“One of the indicators of changing viewer habits, especially with these Olympics, is that our digital consumption has more than tripled from London in each of the first three days of full competition”, Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports Group, said in a statement. “We’ve also been pleasantly surprised that our multi-platform strategy is paying big dividends”.

The new ratings calculation takes into account prime-time telecasts on NBC Sports Network and Bravo, along with streaming, which in total adds up to 2.7 million viewers to the 28.9 million who watched cable telecast. The 2012 Olympics averaged 31.6 million viewers during the extended primetime block of the third night of competition. In addition, the telecast, which featured six USA swimming medals, Michael Phelps’ clash with South Africa’s Chad le Clos in the 200m fly semifinal, and the American tandem of Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross in beach volleyball, averaged 28.9 million viewers.

While Sunday’s early numbers are pretty sizable they are still down from London’s first Sunday night, which 36 million people watched.