This is a quick snapshot of TV by the numbers for the week of Oct. 26 through Nov. 1, revealing the most-watched shows and networks using glass-level data from Vizio’s Inscape, and the top shows and networks by TV ad impressions with insights via iSpot.tv.

Most-Watched Shows and Networks 

Via Vizio’s Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million active and opted-in smart TVs. 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).

Simply put, America is spending a ton of time watching NFL games compared to everything else on TV. Of all the minutes watched last week, 7.44% were spent on NFL games, an increase from the previous week’s 6.70%. The 2020 World Series remained in second place (0.96%), while multiple news programs rose up the rankings — not surprising, as it was the last full week before the election.

Remarkably, there were no changes in the top 10 spots of the network ranking. Thanks in part to NFL games and the World Series, Fox led with 8.78% of the minutes watched, followed by NBC (8.36%) and Fox News (7.57%). Hallmark Movies & Mysteries moved up from No. 23 to No. 16, propelled by Christmas movies that are now airing in earnest. The only newcomer to the ranking was Freeform, which edged up from No. 30 to No. 25 with 0.85% of the minutes watched.

Top Shows and Networks by TV Ad Impressions

Via iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. Rankings are by TV ad impressions, for new episodes only. 

NFL led with 7.8 billion TV ad impressions, a 6.6% decrease from the previous week. College football, on the other hand, saw an 8.9% increase in impressions week-over-week, up to 3.5 billion. MLB rounded out the top three with 1.4 billion impressions. While the majority of the ranking was made up of the various news programs we see each week, a few other popular shows made the list: The Voice took ninth place with 584.9 million impressions (a 25.41% decrease from the previous week), The Bachelorette delivered 328.1 million (nearly identical to the previous week) and This Is Us returned for its fifth season, racking up 318.8 million impressions with its two episodes that aired back-to-back.

Once again, first place went to Fox with 7.6 billion TV ad impressions, but it represented a 7.42% decrease from the previous week. NBC jumped into second place with 5.65 billion impressions and ABC took third (5.64 billion). The Weather Channel rose up the ranking, thanks to Hurricane Zeta and Winter Storm Billy coverage. New entrants to the ranking included Lifetime, with its 258 million impressions driven by primarily Christmas movies, Travel (279.8 million) and Investigation Discovery (235.5 million).

This is a quick snapshot of TV by the numbers for the week of Oct. 19-25, revealing the most-watched shows and networks using glass-level data from Vizio’s Inscape, and the top shows and networks by TV ad impressions with insights via iSpot.tv.

Most-Watched Shows and Networks 

Via Vizio’s Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million active and opted-in smart TVs. 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).

Once again sports led for watch-time: NFL games captured 6.70% of the minutes watched last week, followed by the 2020 World Series (3.33%) and college football (1.53%). Various news programs also rose up in the rankings, and it’s worth noting that all of the shows that didn’t see week-over-week rankings changes were Fox News programs. The Voice, which had its two-night premiere on Oct. 19 and 20, jumped into 12th place with 0.57% of the minutes watched.

Fox took No. 1 on the network ranking for the second week in a row (10.09%), thanks in part to NFL and World Series games. NBC rose into second place with 8.19% of the minutes watched, partially fueled by NFL games and The Voice. Multiple cable networks also moved up, including two ranking newcomers: Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (0.92%) and TV Land (0.86%).

Top Shows and Networks by TV Ad Impressions

Via iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. Rankings are by TV ad impressions, for new episodes only. 

TV ad impressions for NFL games jumped up 26.83% week-over-week, to 8.4 billion. MLB (3.4 billion) and college football (3.2 billion) maintained their second and third places, respectively. NBC’s The Voice, which kicked off its 19th season last week, snagged fourth place with 784.2 million TV ad impressions, nearly 110 million more than the No. 5 program (America’s Newsroom).

Not only did Fox keep its first-place position from the previous week, it delivered over 8.3 billion TV ad impressions, a 46.22% week-over-week increase. CBS, in second place with nearly 6.9 billion impressions, also saw an increase: 36.95%. Unsurprisingly, sports were critical to the impressions for both networks: On Fox, over 3.3 billion impressions came from MLB games and 3.2 billion from NFL games — combined, making up 78.8% of the network’s total impressions for the week. Over half of CBS’ impressions came from NFL games (3.2 billion), with Big Brother as the No. 2 impressions-driving program (419.3 million). Notable newcomers to the top 25 ranking included Hallmark (337.6 million impressions), which kicked off its “Countdown to Christmas” movie event on Oct. 24, and Big Ten Network (245.4 million), a result of the Big Ten conference finally starting their season.

President Donald Trump and former VP Joe Biden will square off for their final presidential debate Thursday, Oct. 22. The 90-minute interchange starts at 9 p.m. ET at Belmont University in Nashville. Kristen Welker, NBC News’ White House correspondent, moderates. 

The candidates will discuss COVID, race, climate change, national security and other issues. 

The Commission on Presidential Debates said Trump and Biden will have two minutes of uninterrupted time at the beginning of each 15-minute segment. The candidate who is not speaking will have his microphone muted. After the two minutes of uninterrupted time, the mics will be on for open discussion

Chris Wallace of Fox News moderated the first presidential debate Sept. 29 in Cleveland. 

This is a quick snapshot of TV by the numbers for the week of Oct. 12-18, revealing the most-watched shows and networks using glass-level data from Vizio’s Inscape, and the top shows and networks by TV ad impressions with insights via iSpot.tv.

Most-Watched Shows and Networks 

Via Vizio's Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million active and opted-in smart TVs. 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).

Unsurprisingly, the NFL remained in the lead for watch-time last week (5.94% of minutes watched), while MLB (3.14%) rose into second place and college football (2.49%) slipped to third. The Barrett Confirmation Hearings on Fox News took fifth place with 0.77% share duration. A few ranking newcomers this time around: American Pickers, Rizzoli & Isles and Two and a Half Men. And while it didn’t make the top 25, it’s worth noting that ABC’s broadcast of Joe Biden’s town hall, The Vice President and the People -- A Special Edition of 20/20, captured 0.33% of watch-time, landing it at No. 30 for the week.

Thanks in part to NFL and MLB games, Fox took No. 1 on the network ranking with 7.62% of watch-time. Fox News also moved up a spot into second place (7.38% share duration), followed by CBS (7.07%), NBC (6.54%) and ABC (6.16%). While multiple cable networks had no position change compared to the previous week, two new networks came into the top 25: Fox Sports 1 (No. 17 with 1.21% share duration) and Freeform (No. 25, 0.93%).

Top Shows and Networks by TV Ad Impressions

Via iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. Rankings are by TV ad impressions, for new episodes only. 

Another week, another rankings win for the NFL, with games delivering over 6.62 billion TV ad impressions — although that represented an 18.98% decrease in impressions from the previous week. The MLB moved into second place with 3.9 billion impressions (a 95.47% week-over-week increase) while college football took No. 3 (2.5 billion impressions, a 28.57% decrease). Only four non sports/news programs made the top 25: The Young and the Restless, The Bachelorette (which just returned for its 16th season), Big Brother and General Hospital.

Thanks to an assist from various sports, the big four broadcasters dominated the top of the network ranking: Fox jumped into first place, delivering 5.6 billion TV ad impressions, 56% of which came from NFL games and 23.9% from MLB games. CBS took second place with 5 billion impressions (32% from NFL games), ABC was third (4.7 billion, 12% of which came from college football) and No. 4 went to NBC (4.5 billion impressions, 22% from NFL). And thanks to baseball, Fox Sports 1 jumped into the top 10 with 1.6 billion impressions.

The vice presidential debate Wednesday night drew 57.9 million viewers, up 56% from 37.2 million viewers in 2016, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen said that 18 networks aired live or tape delayed coverage from about 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET and that overall, the debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence generated a 33.7 household rating, up 41% from 2016.

Four years ago, when Pence debated Tim Kaine, it drew a 23.5 rating.

Related: Viewership Insights for the First Presidential Debate

The first presidential debate on Sept. 29 drew 73.1 million people, according to Nielsen.

For the VP debate, Fox News had the most total viewers with 11.5 million people tuning in.

ABC had 9.4 million viewers, CNN had 7.3 million, MSNBC had 6.7 million, NBC had 6.6 million, CBS had 5.2 million and Fox had 4.1 million.

ABC will host a town hall with Joe Biden, former vice president and the Democratic presidential nominee, Oct. 15. George Stephanopoulos, chief anchor at ABC News, will moderate. The event happens in Philadelphia during primetime. 

President Trump and Biden were scheduled to debate Oct. 15 in Miami, but Trump’s COVID-19 issues appear to have cancelled the event. The Commission on Presidential Debates proposed a remote debate that night, but Trump dismissed the idea as “ridiculous.”

ABC News senior executive producer Marc Burstein is the executive producer of the town hall. 

NBC News hosted a primetime Biden town hall Oct. 5. 

ABC had the top score in Wednesday prime, with robust VP debate tune-in resulting in a 1.4 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and an 8 share. In second was Fox at 1.2/6. 

ABC had a debate pre-game at 0.9 and Mike Pence-Kamala Harris got a 1.8 from 9 to 11 p.m. 

The presidential debate last week got a 2.6 on ABC. 

Ratings for the traditional Big Four were high on the night, thanks to the VP showdown. 

Fox had The Masked Singer off 18% to 1.4 and the debate at 1.1. 

NBC got a 1.1/6 and CBS a 0.9/5. NBC had Weakest Link at a flat 0.8 and the debate at 1.2. 

CBS had Big Brother down 18% to 0.9 and the debate at 1.0. 

Univision got a 0.3/2 and Telemundo a 0.3.1. On Univision, Medicos got a flat 0.3 and so did the debate.

On Telemundo, Exatlon Estados Unidos got a level 0.3 and the debate a 0.3. 

The CW scored a 0.1/1. The premiere of Patrick Dempsey drama Devils got a 0.1 and the start of Coroner a 0.1. 

The Commission on Presidential Debates has decided the second of three presidential debates is going to be virtual after President Trump tested positive for COVID-19 and was briefly hospitalized, but in response the President told Fox Business he would not participate.

The debate was to have been Oct. 15 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Fla., a state with the third-most COVID-19 cases in the country, and was to be moderated by CNN's Steve Scully.

"I'm not going to do a virtual debate," he told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate; that's not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate; it's ridiculous," he  He also said CNN's Scully was a "never Trumper." The President also said the commission and the media were trying to protect Biden.

Trump told Bartiromo he was feeling better and would even like to do a rally.

This is a quick snapshot of TV by the numbers for the week of Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, revealing the most-watched shows and networks using glass-level data from Vizio's Inscape, and the top shows and networks by TV ad impressions with insights via iSpot.tv. Today we also have a special section with social video trends for the first presidential debate via Tubular Labs.

Most-Watched Shows and Networks 

Via Vizio's Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million active and opted-in smart TVs. 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). Note: The rankings below do not include the presidential debate — for more on that, check out our recap here.

It was a big week for sports: Four out of the top five programs by watch-time were sports-related, led once again by the NFL (6.63% share duration). College football jumped into second place from ninth last time (2.55% share duration), followed by MLB games (1.88%) and the 2020 NBA Finals (1.32%). A few new shows made the ranking that didn’t crack the top 50 the previous week: The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer, 60 Minutes, Guy’s Grocery Games and NCIS: Los Angeles.

On the network side of things, CBS jumped into first place with a 7.26% share duration, up from fifth place last time. NBC (7.13%) and ABC (7.07%) slipped slightly although still made the top three. The middle-of-the-pack networks all moved up during the week measured, while TNT, TBS and Univision were three networks that dropped in the ranking.

It’s also worth mentioning how big a weekend it was for cable news given President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis. Of all the live, linear minutes watched from Friday, Oct. 2 through Sunday, Oct. 4, 5.16% of the time was spent on Fox News — slightly less watch-time than the previous weekend (5.17% from Sept. 25-27). CNN, on the other hand, more than doubled its share of watch-time, up to 4.61% vs. 2.20%. Time spent with MSNBC was up as well, with a 2.17% share duration this past weekend compared to 1.80% the weekend of Sept. 25-27.

Top Shows and Networks by TV Ad Impressions

Via iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. Rankings are by TV ad impressions, for new episodes only and this does not include the first presidential debate.

Although the NFL remained in first place, impressions generated by games dropped to 7.25 billion in the last week vs. 8.1 billion previously. The MLB jumped up the ranking into second place, racking up 2.4 billion impressions, an impressive 525.1% increase from the previous week. College football and the NBA were close behind, while CNN Newsroom rounded out the top five with 739.5 million impressions. The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer also experienced a notable increase in impressions, up 74.43% week-over-week.

ABC leads for networks for the second week in a row with 6.68 billion TV ad impressions, 31.8% of which came from NBA games. CBS rose into second place with 6.26 billion impressions, followed by ESPN (5.3 billion). Networks new to the top 25 ranking included Lifetime (211.1 million impressions) and MTV (203.8 million).

Social Video Insights for Presidential Debate 

According to an analysis from Tubular Labs, news media dominated coverage of the first presidential debate on YouTube. The top creators for debate content, ranked by YouTube views in the seven days ending Oct. 2, were Fox News (13.5 million views), C-SPAN (12.4 million), ABC News (11.3 million) CNN (9.5 million) and CBS News (8 million). The most-viewed videos used hashtags such as #presidentialdebate (22.8 million views), #trump (15.3 million) and #biden (13.3 million). 

Coverage of the full debate was the most-watched format among the top videos on YouTube, but comedian reactions also ranked high:

Fox News' Chris Wallace has tested negative for COVID-19 after moderating the first presidential debate Tuesday, Sept. 29, from Cleveland. 

President Donald Trump tested positive for the virus only a couple days after the debate and Wallace "sat several feet away from the president for the entirety of the 90-minute[s]," Fox said in announcing his negative test.

Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts has also tested negative. He reported from home Monday (Oct. 5), having stayed there until he got the results, and said he would be back at the White House Tuesday.

The Commission on Presidential Debates was still mum about the prospects for the Oct. 15 debate given the President's COVID-19 illness, but the White House signaled it should go on.

Related: Trump Quarantine Raises Questions About Second Debate

It may have been part of the President's effort to portray himself as stronger than the virus and ready to return to the campaign trail, but attorney and advisor Rudi Giuliani said on ABC’s Good Morning America Monday that he thought going ahead with the debate was "very possible" and he wasn't planning to ask for a later date.

Giuliani has been handling negotiations with the commission over the televised debates.

Giuliani added the caveat that that was assuming he continued to make progress. He said he assumed Trump would be able to do the debate. "I can't see any reason why he wouldn't," he told George Stephanopoulos.

He said the debates were "enormously valuable to the American people" and that he was sure the President would make "every effort" to be there. 

The second debate will be in Miami. Steve Scully, senior executive producer and political editor at C-SPAN Networks, is scheduled to moderate.

The first presidential debate of the 2020 election drew 73.1 million viewers, down 13% from the first debate four years ago, which drew 84 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

President Trump and former VP Joe Biden squaring off drew a 40.2 household rating, down from the 47.6 rating generated when Trump took on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Nielsen said the figures include live coverage on 16 broadcast and cable networks. The rating service notes that out-of-home viewing and connected TV are included in the 2020 figures, and could contribute as much as 11% of viewing for televised political events.

Related: Viewership Insights for the First Presidential Debate

Fox News Channel drew 17.1 million viewers, the most of any TV network. It was followed by ABC with 12.1 million, NBC with 9.3 million , CNN with 7.9 million, MSNBC with 7 million, CBS with 6.1 million, Fox with 5.2 million and CNN with 51,000. 

The first presidential debate of the 2020 election is officially in the books and per Vizio's Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million smart TVs, in general, nearly 60% of TVs tuned into the debate. 

Viewership across networks was fairly stable over the course of the first hour, but started to decline around 10:30 p.m. ET as it came to a close, before rising again as people tuned into post-debate analysis.

Related: Debate Commission Vows to Change Format

Looking specifically at CNN, viewership was fairly stable for most of the evening. Tune-in climbed slightly over the course of the first hour before leveling off during the second half. Although viewership dropped for a few minutes after the debate concluded, it spiked right around 11p.m. ET as people turned to CNN’s post-debate analysis — and tune-in at that point was higher than it had been during the debate. 

Even more notable is that although tune-in spiked for other networks’ post-debate commentary after 11 p.m., only CNN and MSNBC saw higher viewership post-debate than what they experienced during the debate itself. 

The highest levels of debate tune-in on CNN occurred between 10:04 p.m. and 10:27 p.m. ET, and again from 10:32 p.m. to 10:35 p.m. During the first period of time, President Trump and Joe Biden were talking about crime, reimagining policing and protests, before shifting to climate change. It was during this time that, when prodded to denounce white supremacy, Trump said proud boys should “stand back and stand by.” The second sustained peak was when they were discussing mail-in voting and voter fraud.

The top local area markets for the debate on CNN by tune-in:

1. Washington, DC (Hagerstown)
2. San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
3. New York
4. Eureka
5. Philadelphia

The first presidential debate, which aired across multiple cable and broadcast networks Monday (Sept. 26), was a social media behemoth on Facebook and Twitter.

It drew the most uniques of any TV series or special on the night by a factor of almost 100, logging in at 23,974,000. The next highest uniques total was generated by another type of face-off, WWE's Monday Night RAW, with 255,000.

Uniques are “unique social media accounts that have authored original content [on those platforms] related to a linear TV episode or engaged with that content."

The total number of posts about the debate, and further interactions with those posts (dubbed "engagement"), was a whopping 83,016,000, some 200 times the same figure for RAW (426,000).

The baseball game on MLB network (the Mets vs. the Marlins) was third in uniques on the night, with 1,496,000.