NEW YORK — Clearly, there’s room for Beatles, zombies and Olympic athletes on the same night of television.

NBC’s Sunday night Olympics coverage reached 26.3 million viewers, essentially even with the 26.4 million who watched the first Sunday in Vancouver four years ago.

A CBS special about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with performances by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr was seen by about 14 million people. The 15.8 million who watched “The Walking Dead” was its second biggest audience ever while “Downton Abbey” held up with 6.7 million.

One clear cultural difference: Nielsen says “The Walking Dead” was mentioned in 1.2 million tweets, while the Beatles special hit 260,000 tweets.


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