Take That, Infomercials: Olympic Late Night Ratings Best Since 2019 President's Cup

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Before we get to the Olympic ratings news supplied by NBC/Golf Channel, just a reminder that this Thursday’s early morning Golf Channel viewing options cover a vast array of ailments starting at midnight PT/3 am ET: Squat into the best of you! is followed by 5 Makeup Tips 4 You before giving way to the last hour, one-two punch of greatest Must See TV since Cheers and Night Court: Stop Brain Fog and Arthritis + Neck Pain.

If nothing else, this should help a few Villages early-risers fall back to sleep. This middle of the night lineup airs just a bit later than the block last week showing third round women’s Tokyo Olympic golf and the week before that, men’s second round play.

Guess what?

Ratings were up big! But the men’s Olympic golf was down about 8 million American viewers compared to 2016’s final round picked up by NBC. So there’s that.

From Golf Channel PR:

  • Coverage of the down-to-the-wire final round of men’s golf on Saturday, July 31 delivered the best late night viewership in GOLF Channel history (878,000 viewers, Midnight-3:30 am ET), and ranked second among all networks in that time period (behind only NBC’s “Prime Plus” Olympics show).

Where, incidentally, the golf was not deemed good enough to show on NBC Prime Plus.

Last time, NBC gave around 90 minutes to the final round and had 8.8 million average viewers plus huge (very specific) streaming numbers.

  • Primetime coverage of the men’s golf competition averaged 565,000 viewers – marking GOLF Channel’s best four-day primetime stretch since December 2019 (President’s Cup).

Also worth noting: early 2016 coverage from Rio on Golf Channel drew a 1.22 rating and an average of 1.845 million viewers.

On the women’s side the numbers were pretty awful in Rio and so anything was bound to be better.

  • Coverage of the women’s golf competition averaged 345,000 viewers – a 26% increase over the same event in Rio in 2016. The final round on Friday, August 6 (595,000 viewers) increased 39% from comparable Rio coverage.

  • Last Friday’s final round of the women’s competition was GOLF Channel’s most-watched women’s golf telecast since August 2017 (Solheim Cup final round).

NBC did show a nice chunk of the women’s third round late Friday/early Saturday but did not show any of the exciting final round.