The Super Bowl and Winter Olympics had a lot to do with the 2025-26 victory.
Kenneth Walker III of the Seattle Seahawks breaks a tackle against Milton Williams of the New England Patriots during Super Bowl LX.will win the first 2025-26 season in total viewers — the first time that’s happened since the latter days of Must-See TV.
With the September-to-May TV season coming to a close, NBC will finish with an across-the-board win among all viewers, adults 18-49 and adults 25-54. The victory is thanks in no small part to two-plus weeks in February, when the'South Park' Creators Bring Deepfake Trump Penis Out on 'Kimmel,' Announce Season 29 Premiere Date Through May 17, NBC has averaged 5.83 million viewers in primetime this season, up about 14 percent from 2024-25.
CBS — which had won every seasonrounds out the big four networks with 3.41 million viewers . Unless otherwise noted, all figures in this story are Nielsen linear ratings only and don’t include streaming .averaged 21 million viewers on NBC and 23.5 million including streaming on Peacock and other digital platforms. CBS fell the farthest, partly because of some declines in individual shows.
But the network also rested most of its scripted series, including strong performers like, in January and most of February, two of the higher-use TV months of the year. ABC edged up, and measuring entertainment programming only , it’s the only network to grow year to year in total viewers. Fox had some successes with shows like; its year-to-year decline is explained mostly by having had the Super Bowl last season and not this season.
NBC also led the key ad-sales demographics of adults 18-49 and 25-54. In the 18-49 demo, it scored a 1.01 rating in primetime for NBC’s first win in that measure since the 2021-22 season . Fox came in second with a 0.64 rating/871,000 viewers, followed by ABC and CBS . Among adults 25-54, NBC posted a 1.32 rating, equivalent to 1.66 million viewers.
Fox edged ABC for second place, and CBS was fourth at 0.64/804,000. The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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