Scratch that whole 2.3 overnight rating thing for the NFL Network’s Thanksgiving opener. The Sports Business Daily now reports that the Broncos/Chiefs telecast netted a 6.8 cable rating with 4.2 million viewers.
Not pitiful. Very, very impressive.
For a network that has very limited carriage (today signing a deal with Insight Communications), the NFL Network hit a home run on Thursday, scoring as many viewers as some first round NBA Playoff games and scoring the highest rating for any non-Monday Night Football sporting event on cable this year.
Important to note: ratings are misleading. While the 6.8 is higher than any MLB Division Series or NBA Playoff game on cable this year, the total viewers are below several baseball and basketball telecasts. Still, 6.8 is almost insanely higher than 2.3; usually overnight ratings end up either being higher than or almost the same as the final ratings, at least in sports (example: Spurs/Pistons Game 7 in ’05 got a 13.0 overnight rating and an 11.9 final rating). Overnight ratings measure the top 55 television markets; considering the blurb by David Barron on how low the ratings in New York and L.A. were, that might factor into why the overnights were so low. Also important to note. The “6.8 cable rating [represented] a percentage of viewers with NFL Network access who watched.” In other words, that’s 6.8 percent of the people who actually have access to NFL Network.
With this development, I think it’s fair to say that NFL Network games will be beating TNT NBA and ESPN college football games pretty handily for the rest of the season. If distribution goes up (NFL Network is only in 41 million homes), there’s a possibility that NFL Network games could even approach Monday Night Football games on ESPN.
