Final Ratings: NBC's Presidents Cup Finale Audience Down From Recent Years

NBC finished with a 1.9 rating and 2.7 million viewers for Sunday’s coverage of the Presidents Cup, which saw the U.S. defeat the Int’l squad 18.5-15.5. That figure is down from a 3.0 rating and 4.2 million viewers for the final day in ’05, which was the last time the event aired from the East Coast of the U.S. Final-round coverage in ’09 from S.F. earned NBC a 2.4 rating and 3.5 million viewers. Golf Channel saw gains for its live early round coverage compared to ’05. However, the net’s average of 757,000 viewers for Thursday and Friday was down 28% from ’09 (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).

FAMILY MATTERS: Nielsen and Twitter released their first rankings showing the TV-related conversation on the social media website. There is “practically no overlap between the most-tweeted shows on TV and the highest-rated shows.” ESPN’s “The Book of Manning” documentary was ranked fifth for the week of Sept. 23-29 (VARIETY, 10/7 issue). ESPN averaged 2.24 million viewers for the premiere of "The Book of Manning" on Sept. 24, marking the net’s sixth-best documentary audience since “30 for 30” began (Karp)

NOTES: HBO earned 1.6 million viewers for the Miguel Cotto-Delvin Rodriguez fight last Saturday, the net’s best for “HBO Boxing” this year. The rating topped a fight held a week earlier, featuring Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Bryan Vera. HBO also showed Wladimir Klitschko-Alexander Povetkin, which drew 534,000 viewers. The replay had 705,000 viewers in primetime (MMAPAYOUT.com, 10/9)….Fox Deportes finished first among U.S. Spanish-language sports networks in total-day and primetime viewers for September. The net also had four of the top 10 U.S. Spanish cable sports programs in total viewers (Fox Deportes).

The charts below lists final ratings from recent sports telecsts.