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CBS Sports scored a near clean-sweep of Nielsen’s year-end list of the most-watched telecasts of the year, thanks to a number of high-profile football match-ups in the past year, including the Super Bowl XLVII.
Continuing a years-long trend, sports and special events continued to be king of the ratings hill in 2013. But football clearly dominated the television landscape over the past 12 months, according to Nielsen.
Overall, football on CBS, including pre- and post-game shows, landed in seven of the top 10 spots on the Nielsen list. In fact, the Oscars on ABC were the only non-football program in the 2013 most-watched list (Fox scored spots #6 and #8 with the NFC championships).
Unsurprisingly, Super Bowl XLVII was the most watched single telecast of the year, with 108,693,000 average viewers giving CBS a 37.6 rating for the game. The Super Bowl delay, post-game and kickoff shows landed in spots #2-4. CBS Sports rounded out the top 5 with the first non-Super Bowl entry, the AFC Championships (47,707,000 viewers/16.5 rating).
The Oscars, in comparison, ranked 7th, with 40,376,000 viewers and a 14.0 rating.
NBC claimed the top spot in the regularly scheduled programming rankings, again with football. NBC Sunday Night Football averaged 21,734,000 viewers in 2013 for a 7.4 rating. The pre-kick show on NBC ranked #2.
Reality competitions remained popular with audiences, with ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and Fox’s “American Idol” both seeing their competition and results shows posting in the top 10.
CBS was the only network that saw regularly scheduled dramas and sitcoms in the Top 10, with “NCIS” finishing #4 overall (14,692,000 average viewers/5.0 rating) and “The Big Bang Theory” coming in at #8 (13,217,000 average viewers/4.5 rating).
Nielsen noted that “Big Bang” was the first sitcom to crack the top rankings in recent years.
Time-shifting grew even more popular in 2013, and Nielsen’s numbers on the practice tell two different stories.
In terms of percentage lift for individual programs, cable dramas dominate the top 10 spots. But when it comes to actual viewership boosts, it’s the broadcast shows that rule.
FX, USA and AMC were the only cablers in the top 10 list of time-shfted programs ranked by percentage lift, with FX’s “The Bridge” taking the top slot (+164.3 percent).
USA’s “Covert Affairs” was #2 (+164 percent), and FX’s “Justified” came in at #3 (+144.8 percent).
AMC’s “Mad Men” and FX’s “The Americans” round out the top 5.
When ranked by absolute difference in viewership, NBC’s “The Blacklist” was topped the time-shifting list, with nearly 8 million additional viewers (Nielsen measures Live +7 for this list).
Each of the Big Four have an entry at the top of this ranking, with Fox’s “The Following” at #2 (+5.6 million), CBS’s “Under the Dome” at #3 (+5.4 million), ABC’s “Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) at #4 (+5.3 million) and Fox’s “Sleepy Hollow” at #5 (+5.3 million).
For the first time this year, Nielsen included social media buzz in their year-end rankings, breaking down the top shows using their new Twitter TV Ratings. Cable and broadcast saw a pretty even split at the top of the social media heap, but AMC came out on top overall, taking both top two spots.
“Breaking Bad,” which ended its critically acclaimed run with a burst of fan enthusiasm, had an average of 6 million people reading tweets about the show.
“The Walking Dead” came in second with 4.8 million people on average seeing tweets about the Zombie drama.
ABC’s “Scandal” was the most buzzed about broadcast show on Twitter, with an average of 2.3 million people reading tweets about Olivia Pope & Company.
FX’s “American Horror Story: Coven” and ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” were also in the top 5.
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