Sunday, May 24, 2026

Sunday Ratings: Olympics Go Out with a Whimper, “Summer of Soul” Yields Very Modest Audience

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Everyone must have been watching “Euphoria” and “Billions” last night. Because they weren’t watching broadcast TV, that’s for sure.

The Winter Olympics on NBC ended with a whimper, just 5.04 million viewers.

It was worse on ABC where Questlove’s “Summer of Love” had a meager 1.5 million. This was Disney using ABC to promote a Searchlight movie for Hulu and maybe find some Oscar votes in the process. But it didn’t work out. I may have been the only person who watched it. “Summer of Soul” deserves an Emmy award after last night’s showing. It’s a great archival doc that continues to insist its material was “lost” and “found.” This is not true.

We don’t have the numbers for “Euphoria” yet, but the episode was all about Lexi’s school play. These “kids” (they’re in their 20s) go to a high school that looks like it spent $50,000 or more on the class musical.

Meanwhile, the internet theory is that Zendaya’s Rue is already dead from a drug overdose and is watching all this from the great beyond. Certainly last night there were what I would call “Paul is dead” clues: a funeral in Lexi’s play (it was for Rue’s dad) and the way Rue sat alone at the show and just made faces. Who knows? Maybe they’re all dead. If any of us had gone through high school this way, no one would made it to graduation.

Tomorrow, cable ratings.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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