Welcome to our weekly snapshot of TV by the numbers, highlighting the most-watched shows and networks for January 6-12, with insights from Inscape, the currency-grade smart TV ACR data provider and data technology division of Vizio. 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).

It was a big week in news: Congress certified Donald Trump’s presidential election victory (and on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, at that), a winter storm slammed the Mid-Atlantic, devastating wildfires broke out in the Los Angeles area and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, just to name a few. It was also the first full work week following the holidays, with programming schedules starting to return to normal — So it’s not exactly a shocker that multiple news programs saw increased viewership shares week-over-week. Fox News in particular benefitted, with multiple programs rising up the ranking, led by America’s Newsroom which jumped from No. 24 previously to No. 12, capturing a 0.68% viewership share. 

A few highlights from the week: 

• Other news programming with week-over-week increases include Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, ABC World News Tonight With David Muir and NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt — and aside from GMA, none had made the ranking the previous week. 

• Of course, the one thing that reliably beats news is sports, and viewers were gobbling up the NFL and college football playoffs: NFL games accounted for 8.79% of TV watch-time, while the Cotton Bowl takes second place on the ranking (1.58% share) and the Orange Bowl lands in fourth (1.28%).  

• Men’s college basketball moves up from fifth to third, while the NBA jumps from No. 23 to No. 10. 

• The Big Bang Theory and Friends both move up the ranking week-over-week, thanks to reruns on TBS.

• Outside of news programs, week-over-week ranking newcomers include Family Feud (from No. 29 to No. 22) and Gunsmoke (from No. 34 to No. 24). 

NFL playoff games helped CBS take first place on the TV network ranking — read more on The Measure.