A look at TV’s most-watched shows

If you want to make a chart-topping TV show, here’s the secret formula: Kevin Costner playing football.

Variety recently released a list of the top 100 most-watched series of the 2022-2023 TV season, according to Nielson data. And we double-dog dare you not to have the same exact show idea that we did after reading the top three:

1. Sunday Night Football: With an average viewership of over 18 million people per week, the NFL on NBC took down the #1 spot.
2. Yellowstone: The Kevin-Costner led drama on Paramount Plus took the #2 spot, with 11.5 million viewers/week. Though the show is in its last season, a Matthew McConaughey spin-off has been confirmed.
3. Monday Night Football: The NFL’s Monday night game on ESPN rounded out the top three, with 10.1 million viewers a week.

🥇 CBS, ftw: Of the top 15 shows on the list, eight of them are on CBS, including NCIS, FBI, and Young Sheldon, the top comedy on the list. CBS also took down the title of Most Viewed Network, with a total of almost 828 billion minutes watched (head-and-shoulders above #2 NBC, which recorded just under 500 billion viewing minutes).

🧠 In the know: This list does come with a big ol’ asterisk – it’s missing all of the shows on streaming. That’s because streamers don’t often share their data publicly – and, when they do, it’s measured in total hours watched vs. the weekly averages of linear TV.

But, by using total minutes viewed, we can get to a more apples-to-apples comparison. This would put Netflix in an almost-tie with CBS for first place on the network chart, with about 827 billion total minutes viewed.