TV Ratings: Football Powers NBC To Week's Win, FOX Rolls On

The CBS comedy “Ghosts” has shown early promise, so far landing just outside the top 20 for the young season so far, while ABC’s reboot of “The Wonder Years” sitcom is hovering at around No. 65, according to The Associated Press citing Nielsen figures.

But the two shows have already been granted full-season runs. Admiring reviews for both aside, the reason lies in the numbers — the ones that measure how a show performs in the long run, not just after its first day of airing as reflected above.

The debut episode of “The Wonder Years” was watched by 3.2 million viewers on ABC when it aired Sept. 22. That figure grew to 6.4 million after a week of combined broadcast and digital viewership.

“Ghosts,” based on a hit BBC comedy, drew just shy of 5.6 million viewers to its Oct. 7 broadcast debut, reaching 7.76 million after seven days that also included on-demand viewing.

The winner of last week’s network derby was NBC, home to two football games that landed in the top 10. It averaged 5.79 million viewers in prime-time, followed by CBS with 5.11 million. Fox had 4 million, ABC had 3 million, Univision had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1 million and ION Television had 970,000.

➤Top 20 Prime Time Shows:

1. NFL Football: Indianapolis at San Francisco, NBC, 16.1 million.
2. NFL Football: Denver at Cleveland, Fox, 12.99 million.
3. NFL Football: Buffalo at Tennessee, ESPN, 12.5 million.
4. NFL Pregame” (Sunday), NBC, 11.94 million.
5. “NFL Postgame” (Sunday), CBS, 11.4 million.
6. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.5 million.
7. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 9.53 million.
8. 
   “Equalizer,” CBS, 7.8 million.
9. “NCIS,” CBS, 7.65 million.
10. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 7.37 million.
11. “Chicago Fire,” NBC, 7.36 million.
12. “NFL Pregame” (Thursday), Fox, 7.27 million.
13. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 6.77 million.
14. MLB NL Championship: LA Dodgers at Atlanta, TBS, 6.95 million.
15. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.73 million.
16. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 6.36 million.
17. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 6.358 million.
18. “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 6.1 million.
19. MLB AL Championship: Boston at Houston, Fox Sports, 5.8 million.
20. “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 5.78 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening news ratings contest, averaging 7.9 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 6.7 million, and the “CBS Evening News” had 4.9 million.

With a lift from the baseball playoffs, TBS topped the cable networks in prime time, averaging 3.1 million viewers. ESPN had 2.9 million, Fox News Channel had 2.3 million, MSNBC had 1.2 million and Hallmark had 1.1 million.

TV Newser reports Tucker Carlson Tonight marked its second consecutive week as the No. 1 cable news show (3.02 million total viewers/464,000 adults 25-54). Fox News’ The Five finished No. 2 in average total viewers, averaging 3.01 million and 418,000 adults 25-54. Hannity remained the No. 3 cable news show, both in average total viewers ( 2.76 million) and adults 25-54 (400,000), followed by Special Report with Bret Baier (2.28 million) and The Ingraham Angle (2.18 million) rounding out the top 5 in average total viewers. 

Fox News had 13 of the 15-most-watched shows on cable news for the third consecutive week. 

MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show finished No. 7 in total viewers, and was once again the top non-Fox News show on cable news, averaging 2.04 million total viewers for the week.

“Squid Game” was the most streamed program in its first full week of release, with viewers spending 1.91 billion minutes watching the nine-episode South Korean survival drama the week of Sept. 20-26.