Led by Lindsey Vonn's bronze medal performance in her final Olympic downhill, Tuesday's NBC Olympics' primetime coverage delivered a total audience delivery (TAD) average of 20.5 million viewers - an increase of 8 percent over the second Tuesday of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, according to live plus same day fast national data released Wednesday by Nielsen, and digital data from Adobe Analytics.
"To beat a comparable night from four years ago this late in the Olympics is a gravity-defying media achievement," said Joe Brown, senior vice president of research for NBC Sports Group.
Tuesday night's NBC/NBCSN viewership peaked at 23.8 million viewers from 9:30-9:45 p.m. ET, for women's alpine skiing on NBC and women's figure skating short program on NBCSN.
Tuesday night's NBC/NBCSN average of 20.1 million viewers dominated the TV competition - an 88 percent advantage over the combined 10.7 million primetime viewers for ABC, CBS and FOX. The NBC-only 17.6 million viewers in the 8-11 p.m. primetime window topped by 64 percent the other broadcast networks - marking the most dominant second Tuesday of Winter Games coverage ever (people meter history, since September 1987).
Notable:
•Tuesday night's TAD provided an increase of 17 percent over the NBC broadcast viewership - marking the 11th consecutive night of double-digit TAD lift. NBC Olympics' TAD measures broader consumption by calculating average minute viewing across broadcast, cable and digital. NBC Sports Digital delivered an average minute audience of 221,000 for Monday night's coverage.
•NBC's PyeongChang Olympics primetime broadcast (8-11:03 p.m.) averaged 17.5 million viewers and posted a 10.3/18 household rating. Viewership includes the West Coast primetime encore.
