NBC just dethroned YouTube as ratings king. Here's how it did it.

MW NBC just dethroned YouTube as ratings king. Here's how it did it.

By Lukas I. Alpert

A combo of the Olympics and the Super Bowl helped NBC rise to the top spot, ending YouTube's 12-month run as the No. 1 media company by viewership

Gold-medal-winning U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu and fellow Olympians helped drive viewership to NBC in February, knocking YouTube from the top ratings spot for the first time since January 2025.

Score one for legacy media.

NBC rode the success of the Olympics and the Super Bowl to become the most watched media company in February, ending YouTube's 12-month run at the top of the ratings heap.

Comcast Corp.'s $(CMCSA)$ NBCUniversal and sister company Versant $(VSNT)$ together drew 13.1% of the total viewership across all their platforms, according to ratings data released Tuesday by Nielsen. That pushed Alphabet Inc.'s $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$ YouTube into second place with 12.7% of the total addressable audience, Nielsen said.

NBC/Versant's performance represented a huge spike for the combined companies, which had come in fourth in January, drawing an 8.5% viewership share.

The February ratings window spanned the four weeks from Jan. 26 to Feb. 22, but the release of the data was delayed several weeks due to a dispute between some media companies and Nielsen over the ratings agency's new methodology for counting audiences across multiple platforms.

NBC's ratings bonanza marked the first time since January 2025 that a legacy media company took the top ratings spot; Disney $(DIS)$ led the list that month. YouTube had ranked as the highest-rated outlet every month since, establishing the dominance of newer, digital media companies as the most-watched platforms.

Nielsen attributed NBC's surge to the strong audience of 125 million viewers for Super Bowl LX, plus consistently high viewership during the three weeks of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Together, those events led to a 64% increase in viewers to the NBC streaming service Peacock.

Similarly, Versant's USA Network saw a 234% increase in viewership in February due to its extensive Olympics coverage.

Versant was spun off as a separate company from NBCUniversal at the beginning of January, but Nielsen counts the two companies together as NBCU sells advertising for both. Nielsen said NBCU accounted for 10% of the total February viewership figure, with Versant bringing in 3.1%.

The strong ratings should serve as a sign that Versant can stand on its own. The company's stock is down 12% since it began trading in early January, although it has risen 49% from its all-time low in early February, following a period of technical selling.

For February, Disney ranked third with 9.9% of the total audience, followed by Netflix $(NFLX)$ with 8.4% and Paramount Skydance $(PSKY)$ with 7%.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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April 14, 2026 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)

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