NFL Takes Its Place Atop Inscape’s Most-Watched Program Ranking 

Data & MeasurementSports
Written By Eleanor Semeraro

Welcome to our weekly snapshot of TV by the numbers, highlighting the most-watched shows and networks for August 7-13, with insights from Inscape, the currency-grade smart TV ACR data provider and data technology division of Vizio. Data is linear, live TV only and includes all episode types (new and reruns). Rankings are by percent share duration (i.e., time spent watching).

It may still be August, but football has officially entered the field with an early touchdown: NFL preseason games racked up a 2.56% viewership share across all live, linear programs on TV last week, jumping from sixth to first place week-over-week. The Little League baseball regional tournaments — with national broadcasts across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNEWS — hit a home run for viewership as well, capturing a 1.31% viewership share and landing in second place. 

Some additional insights about the top programming on TV:

  • Only three programs maintained ranking position week-over-week: PGA Tour Golf (No. 7), NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt (No. 23) and Everybody Loves Raymond (No. 24). Each saw a slight increase in watch-time, with the largest occurring for PGA Tour golf (from 0.62% previously to 0.85%).

  • Aside from Little League baseball, Chicago P.D. was the only week-over-week ranking newcomer, landing at No. 18 with 0.49% of minutes watched, up from No. 28.

  • Elsewhere in police procedurals, Blue Bloods rises from No. 16 to No. 12 with a 0.59% viewership share, while NCIS slips from No. 5 to No. 8 with 0.71% of minutes watched. 

  • Absent from the ranking is the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, which was way down the chart at No. 45 (0.30% viewership share). This isn’t super surprising, given the drastic difference in time zones that had many matches played in the middle of the U.S. night, plus the American team’s knockout by Sweden on August 6 during the round of 16.  

Curious about which networks captured the most viewership last week? Head over to The Measure to see that ranking and get more insights. 

Eleanor Semeraro

Eleanor is an entertainment analyst and marketing strategist with a passion for all things TV and social media. She’s a regular TV[R]EV contributor and consults for small businesses within the advertising and entertainment data analytics ecosystem.

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