TV Ratings: Football Dominates

Television viewers flocked to the showdown between LSU and Alabama over the weekend, making it the top-rated regular season college football game in eight years, reports The Associated Press.

The Nielsen company said 16.6 million people watched the game late Saturday afternoon, as LSU held off the Tide’s late charge. At 7 p.m. Eastern, just before its conclusion, the audience topped 20 million people.

Similarly, the 6.7 million people who watched Minnesota beat Penn State earlier in the day was a winner for ABC. It was the network’s biggest audience for a noon college football game in three years. It was particularly appealing to Minnesota fans; the rating for the game was the highest in Minneapolis of any college game since at least 2000, when the market ratings became available, Nielsen said.

Behind the dominant force of “Sunday Night Football,” NBC won the week in prime-time, averaging 7.1 million viewers. Fox averaged 6.7 million, CBS had 5.8 million, ABC had 4.3 million, Telemundo had 1.27 million, ION Television had 1.25 million, Univision had 1.2 million and the CW had 720,000.

⏩ Broadcast Prime-time top 20 viewership:

1. NFL Football: Minnesota at Dallas, NBC, 22.99 million.
2. “NFL Sunday Night Pre-Kick,” NBC, 16.72 million.
3. “NFL Sunday Post-Game,” Fox, 15.71 million.
4. NFL Football: Dallas at N.Y. Giants, ESPN, 14.72 million.
5. NFL Football: L.A. Chargers at Oakland, Fox, 13.85 million.
6. “NCIS,” CBS, 10.89 million.
7. “Little Mermaid Live,” ABC, 9 million.
8. “Football Night in America, Part 3,” NBC, 8.89 million.
9. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 8.84 million.
10. “FBI,” CBS, 8.55 million.

11. “NFL Thursday Night Pre-Kick,” Fox, 8.27 million.
12. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 8.16 million.
13. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 8.1 million.
14. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.98 million.
15. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 7.89 million.
16. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 7.69 million.
17. “NFL Monday Night Kick-Off,” ESPN, 7.61 million.
18. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 7.39 million.
19. “Hawaii Five-O,” CBS, 7.13 million.
20. “The Masked Singer,” Fox, 7.12 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 8.2 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.7 million viewers.

CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell appears to be growing its audience right now. For the second consecutive week, Evening News delivered the largest average audience since O’Donnell joined the newscast back in July.

⏩ Top-rated daytime talk shows in the women 25-54:

Dr. Phil (1.0, unchanged from the week before), tied with Live with Kelly and Ryan and Ellen DeGeneres followed by Wendy Williams, and Kelly Clarkson tied with Maury

⏩ Basic Cable Top 5 – Prime Time:

1. ESPN (3,076,000)
2. Fox News (2,675,000)
3. MSNBC (1,949,000)
4. Hallmark Channel (1,496,000)
5. History (978,000)
6. HGTV (976,000)
7. CNN (915,000)
8. A&E (890,000)
9. TBS (882,000)
10. Discovery (833,000)

⏩ Basic cable ranker: on Scribd