Fox and NBC get more than a quarter of their primetime audience from live sports, while ABC is less dependent

The Hollywood Reporter

Fox is expected to finish in third place thanks largely to having live sports. "Fox is something of an outlier among its fellow broadcasters, Nielsen data from the last two seasons show," explains The Hollywood Reporter's Rick Porter. "NBC also owes a sizable portion of their viewership to sports, while ABC likes to tout its viewership independent of it. CBS occupies something of a middle ground. Nonetheless, the outsized effect sports can have on network audiences speaks to why rights to such programming have skyrocketed in recent years. With live sports consistently the most reliable way to get people to watch linear TV (and the commercials that come with it), networks pay hefty premiums to secure those rights and the audiences that tend to follow."