Football Boosts TV Ratings

The new fall TV season doesn't begin in earnest until after next week's Emmy Awards, but the return of football is again providing welcome news for broadcasters.

Football-related programs took 11 of the top 20 spots in the ratings during the past week, and NBC tallied up the viewers. Thursday night's NFL season kickoff (Pittsburgh at New England) became the second-most watched season opener, with 27.4M viewers.The Sunday night game (New York Giants at Dallas) was second in the week's ratings, with 26.8M. The next three spots were NBC's pregame shows for those games.

CBS drew numbers for its pregame and postgames, and 60 Minutes benefited again from a football lead-in, finishing eighth to be the highest non-football program with 11.5M viewers.

Seeking Alpha notes after weeks where Fox News Channel topped cable primetime, ESPN took the lead last week, with 3.69M viewers on average to Fox News' 1.7M and USA Network's 1.62M.

NBC Nightly News is tops in news, with 8.2M viewers to ABC's World News Tonight with 7.8M and CBS Evening News with 6.3M.