TV ratings: Rolex 24

Motorsports returned to broadcast TV last week with the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship's Rolex 24 At Daytona airing across NBC Sports' family of networks, including the start and decisive last two hours airing live on flagship NBC.

Audience peaked with Sunday's finish on NBC, which averaged a 0.66 Nielsen rating and 964,000 household viewers, according to ShowBuzzDaily.com. The top cable audience for the race was Saturday afternoon on USA, which averaged 0.14/215,000 viewers. Saturday's late-night coverage, starting at 10 p.m. ET on USA, averaged 114,000 viewers.

That was down a touch from last year's race finish, whose finish averaged a 0.74/1.23m on NBC -- perhaps because more viewers were making their viewing plans around football, with both NFL conference title games playing later that day (the AFC Championship game Sunday afternoon pulled in a 23.6 rating and 47.8m viewers on CBS), while only the lightly watched Pro Bowl aired on this Sunday last year. The top cable viewing for last year's race was a 0.22/396K for the Saturday afternoon telecast on now-defunct NBCSN.