Professional football continued to dominate American television from October 5 to October 12, according to data released by Nielsen this week.
National Football League (NFL) games and events accounted for nine of the top 10 programs aired on broadcast and cable television during the week, according to Nielsen’s “Big Data + Panels” report.
The national window of games from Paramount-owned CBS was the top overall program during that week, attracting 26.8 million viewers and achieving an 8.3 share on October 12. NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” Week 6 match-up between the Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs was not too far behind with 24.5 million viewers and a 7.6 share, followed by NBC’s pre-game broadcast that drew 17.2 million viewers and a 5.3 share.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football event and its pre-game and post-game broadcasts dominated the list of top 10 television broadcasts last week, earning four different spots on the list. The average audience count across NBC’s top 10 broadcasts was 16.6 million viewers over the age of 2, according to Nielsen.
The Sunday broadcast of “60 Minutes” was the only non-sports event to rank in the top 10 TV programs that week, attracting 10.1 million viewers to CBS and achieving a 3.2 share.
Overall, NBC was the most-watched broadcast network last week with an average audience of 4.4 million viewers across its entertainment, news and sports programming. ABC was in second place at 3.4 million viewers, followed by Fox with 2.4 million viewers. CBS ranked last among the Big Four broadcast networks with 2.1 million viewers.
On cable television, ESPN had the highest-rated broadcast with its “Monday Night Football” game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Jacksonville Jaguars, which aired during the NFL’s Week 5 schedule. That game attracted 9.5 million viewers to the sports cable network and helped it achieve a 3 share. The NFL Network’s London game between the Denver Broncos and the New York Jets was the second highest-rated program on cable, attracting 5.5 million viewers and achieving a 1.7 share.
(The NFL’s week begins on Thursday and ends the following Monday, which account for the Chiefs’ involvement in the top two NFL games during Nielsen’s measurement week, which runs Monday through Sunday.)
But it was baseball — not football — that dominated cable television last week, with Fox Sports and TNT Sports clinching half of the top 10 most-viewed programs on cable with their Major League Baseball (MLB) divisional series games. Fox Sports 1 had the highest viewership with their Game 3 and Game 4 events between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees, with an average audience of 4.8 million overall viewers between both games.
Fox News was the only non-sports cable network to break into the top 10 list, with two episodes of its roundtable discussion program “The Five” grabbing more than 3.7 million viewers between them.
Among overall cable networks, ESPN was the most watched, attracting an average audience of 2.7 million viewers across its programs. Fox News was in a close second with 2.3 million viewers, while TBS saw a boost from its MLB games, ending the week in third place with nearly 2 million viewers.
MSNBC was the second highest-rated cable news channel with an average audience of 814,000 viewers, while CNN logged 459,000 viewers across its programs that week. Newsmax was in fourth place with 187,000 viewers, followed by Nexstar-owned NewsNation with 107,000 viewers.
Top-Rated Broadcast Programs (among viewers over age 2, numbers are rounded)
- “NFL on CBS” national games (CBS) — 26.82 million
- “Sunday Night Football” (NBC) — 24.55 million
- “Sunday Night Football pre-game” (NBC) — 17.17 million
- “Fox NFL Sunday” (Fox) — 15.37 million
- “NFL on CBS” regional games (CBS) — 13.8 million
Top-Rated Cable Network Programs (among viewers over age 2)
- “Monday Night Football” (ESPN) — 9.49 million
- “London Game” (NFL Network) — 5.45 million
- “Monday Night Football pre-game” (ESPN) — 5.22 million
- “MLB AL Division Series: Game 3” (Fox Sports 1) — 4.96 million
- “MLB AL Division Series: Game 4” (Fox Sports 1) — 4.63 million
Top-Rated Cable Networks (among viewers over age 2)
- ESPN — 2.73 million
- Fox News — 2.29 million
- TBS — 1.97 million
- MSNBC — 814,000
- Tru TV — 472,000
- HGTV — 470,000
- CNN — 459,000
- Hallmark — 397,000
- ESPN 2 — 388,000
- Food Network — 370,000
(All ratings data based on Live + Same Day projections as released by Nielsen)
