Kentucky Derby final television rating up from 2012

The race portion of the Kentucky Derby broadcast on NBC on Saturday drew a final rating of 9.7 with a 21 share, up 8 percent from the rating last year and translating to approximately 16.2 million viewers, NBC said on Tuesday.

The rating was tied for the co-second-highest figure since 1992, when the Derby was broadcast on ABC, NBC said. The 2010 broadcast had a higher rating than this year’s edition, which tied with the rating in 2009.

Rating is a measure of the number of viewers of a specific telecast, while share measures the percentage of televisions in use at the time that are tuned to specific broadcast.

The middle section of the three-hour broadcast, from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern, had 9.1 million viewers, NBC said, up 12 percent compared with the viewership figure last year. The first hour of the broadcast had a viewership figure of 500,000, NBC said, up 19 percent compared to the first hour of last year’s broadcast.