Cold Weather A Boon For New Year’s Shows

More than 25 million people tuned in to see Ryan Seacrest ring in 2018 from a frigid Times Square, the biggest audience for ABC’s venerable New Year’s Rockin’ Eve since at least 1991. CNN and Fox also set standards for their celebratory coverage that night. With television networks knocked off their regular schedules on a holiday week, CBS averaged 5.7 million viewers in primetime to lead the broadcasters. ABC had 4.5 million viewers, NBC had 3.9 million, Fox had 3.3 million, Univision had 1.5 million, Ion Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 970,000 and the CW had 910,000.