Two of the dreariest terms in sports — “Thursday Night Football” and “Los Angeles Rams” — elicited a national shrug on NBC.
The Week 15 Rams/Seahawks Thursday Night Football game had an 8.8 final rating and 14.6 million viewers on NBC and NFL Network, up 132% in ratings and 144% in viewership from Buccaneers/Rams last year (3.8, 6.0M) and up 87% and 91% respectively from Cardinals/Rams in 2014 (4.7, 7.7M). Those games, which involved the old St. Louis Rams, aired on NFL Network alone.
The Seahawks’ rout, which peaked at 16.4 million viewers from 9:30-9:45 PM ET, ranks fifth in ratings and viewership out of the nine TNF games on broadcast this season — directly in the middle of the pack.
If middling by this year’s standards, Thursday’s game would have ranked dead last among TNF simulcasts last season — when none of the eight games on broadcast dipped below a 9.3 rating or 14.8 million viewers.
Figures do not include streaming viewership on NBC and NFL digital platforms or the social networking site Twitter, which generated 321,000 viewers. With those numbers added to the mix, the game had 14.9 million.
Among adults 18-49, TNF’s 4.3 rating more-than-doubled last year on NFL Network alone (2.0).
(Thu. numbers from Programming Insider 12/16, NBC Sports PR/Twitter 12/16a, 12/16b)
