All 153 TV Channels Ranked by 2024 Viewership

Another Christmastime, another lump of coal for The Sportsman Channel. (Sorry, we don’t mean to pick.)

For the 2024 installment of perhaps our least-festive (or at least, our most tedious) annual tradition, IndieWire has again ranked every linear TV channel by their calendar-year viewership. As in 2023, 153 channels made the cut, from NBC to Hogar de HGTV, which is essentially a Spanish-language aggregator of HGTV and Food Network content. This year, NBC averaged 4.428 million total viewers each night; Hogar de HGTV averaged literally 1,000 viewers, rivaling your TikTok.

As usual, we’re using Nielsen’s Live + Same Day measurement with a focus on primetime (8 p.m. to 11 p.m., or 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays). Our ranking excludes delayed viewing, meaning that networks with a lot of live programming, such as news and sports, have a clear advantage. It’s OK, the other way of counting ain’t perfect either.

Fox News Channel took advantage of the presidential election, leapfrogging Fox’s broadcast network to land at fourth. CNN jumped from 20th in 2023 to 13th; MSNBC moved up just one slot.

Above the Fox/Fox flip flop, the ol’ “Big 3” networks — NBC, CBS, and ABC — ranked one through three again, and in that order. The Paris Olympics helped NBC hold off CBS, which had the massive Super Bowl.

Broadcast TV still primarily programs new entertainment content in primetime. You and I may not watch those series, but your dad (and middle America) does. The Big 3 + Fox still have great reach, and their sports and awards shows are consistently among the biggest TV telecasts of the year. And broadcast TV is still free. Heck, most antennas don’t even require you to climb on your roof anymore.

See #1 through #153 ranked below, in thousands of average viewers (for example, ESPN averaged 1.703 million viewers; TNT had 813,000). The date range is January 1, 2024-December 11, 2024.