TV Ratings: Football Gobbled Up The Viewers

Even at a time football generally dominates television ratings, the long Thanksgiving Day weekend was notable.

CBS’ turkey day telecast of the Dallas Cowboys against the Las Vegas Raiders reached 37.8 million viewers, the biggest audience for an NFL regular season game since Thanksgiving 1993, reports The Associated Press citing Nielsen stats.

Meanwhile, Michigan’s victory over Ohio State in the Big 10′s annual rivalry game was seen by 15.9 million people on Saturday afternoon. That’s the most-watched regular season college football game since LSU-Alabama two years ago, Nielsen said.

It was also the biggest audience for a college football game on Fox ever, the network said.

For the week in prime time, NBC led with an average of 6.8 million viewers. CBS had 4.8 million, Fox had 3.4 million, ABC had 3.2 million, Univision had 1.3 million, ION Television had 990,000 and Telemundo had 840,000.

📺Top 20 Prime-Times Shows:

1. NFL Football: Buffalo at New Orleans, NBC, 19.38 million.

2. NFL Football: Cleveland at Baltimore, NBC, 16.23 million.

3. “NFL Post-Game,” CBS, 15.19 million.

4. “NFL Pregame,” NBC, 12.24 million.

5. “The OT,” Fox, 11.7 million.

6. NFL Football: N.Y. Giants at Tampa Bay, ESPN, 10.35 million.

7. “Football Night in America,” NBC, 8.48 million.

8. “Yellowstone,” Paramount, 7.89 million.

9. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.56 million.

10. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 6.57 million.

11. College Football: Oklahoma at Oklahoma St., ABC, 6.49 million.

12. “One Last Time: Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett,” CBS, 6.38 million.

13. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.34 million.

14. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 6.33 million.

15. “The Equalizer,” CBS, 5.94 million.

16. “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 5.64 million.

17. “Survivor,” CBS, 5.54 million.

18. “NFL Pregame,” ESPN, 5.43 million.

19. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Monday), Fox News, 5.05 million

20. “FBI,” CBS, 5.04 million.

David Muir, Lester Holt, Norah O'Donnell

TV Newser reports Live-plus-same-day Nielsen data for the week of Nov. 22, 2021 is in, and for the first time in 3 years (156 weeks), NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt averaged more total viewers than any other evening newscast, 8.58 million. That’s the the newscast’s largest average weekly audience since last December, and the largest average audience of any weekday program for the week, excluding sports and syndication.

Despite finishing runner-up in average total viewers for the first time in years, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir remained the top evening newscast during Thanksgiving week among adults 25-54, and has earned more viewers in the ad-friendly demo 84 of the last 86 weeks.

World News Tonight averaged 1.48 million viewers from the key demo, and 8.39 million total viewers during the Thanksgiving-shortened week. Unlike NBC, World News Tonight’s weekly ratings average is based on just two days (Monday and Tuesday). ABC decided to retitle the evening newscast on Thanksgiving eve (Wednesday) and Thanksgiving Thursday, and the Friday edition of WNT was preempted in most of the country by primetime college football.

📺Cable TV:

ESPN led the cable networks, averaging 2.83 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.11 million, Hallmark had 2.01 million, Paramount had 1.18 million and TBS had 888,000.

Graphics courtesy of RoadMN

Courtesy of RoadMN

Month of November: On the regularly-scheduled programming front— Tucker Carlson Tonight ended November as the most-watched show on all of cable news, regaining the title after being edged by The Five in October. Carlson’s 8 p.m. show averaged 3.67  million total viewers, and a cable news-high of 651,000 adults 25-54. Carlson’s interview with the aforementioned Rittenhouse lifted the program past the network’s 5 p.m. offering in the rankings. The Five finished No. 2 on cable news in average total viewers (3.51 million), and second among adults 25-54 (557,000).

Additionally, Hannity took third place in average total viewers, posting an average of 3.23 million at 9 p.m., followed by Special Report with Bret Baier (2.77 million) and The Ingraham Angle (2.66 million) rounding out cable news’ top five for November in average total viewers. Fox delivered 14 of the top 15 cable news programs in overall viewers, along with the top 14 programs in the younger 25-54 demo.

Lastly, the network’s 11 p.m. comedy show, Gutfeld! beat The Rachel Maddow Show for the first time since launch. Not something we necessarily expected to see, according to TV Newser.