Thursday Night Football tied its highest ratings of the season; Top Rank Boxing delivered another strong audience; Pardon the Interruption scored its largest audience since February.
TNF ties season-high in ratings
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Cardinals-Seahawks) averaged an 8.5 rating and 14.77 million viewers on FOX and NFL Network, tying Buccaneers-Bears in Week 5 as the season’s highest rated edition of TNF. Ratings fell 8% and viewership 4% from Week 11 last year (Steelers-Browns: 9.2, 15.40M) and 15% and 12% respectively from 2018 (Packers-Seahawks: 10.0, 16.83M).
All six TNF simulcasts this season (excluding a postponed Chiefs-Bills game that aired on a Monday night) have posted a decline in ratings and/or viewership.
Another strong outing for Top Rank Boxing
The latest edition of ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing averaged a 1.0 rating and 1.76 million viewers last Saturday night, the largest boxing audience on any network since January 2019. The telecast, which retained 72% of its college football lead-in, peaked at 2.1 million from 11:45 PM-Midnight ET.
While the full telecast hit a 22-month high, the Terence Crawford-Kell Brook main event averaged fewer viewers (2.03M, according to Boxing Scene) than Teofimo Lopez-Vasiliy Lomachenko last month (2.73M).
ESPN has now averaged 1.03 million viewers for its seven Saturday night Top Rank cards this year, up 44% from 11 cards on the night last year.
Plus: PTI, NASCAR Awards, F1
Monday’s edition of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption averaged 818,000 viewers, the show’s largest audience since February 24* (915K). It was the first edition of PTI since the show returned to its usual schedule in July to average more viewers than the final pre-hiatus edition March 11 (811K). … Wednesday’s NASCAR Awards averaged 275,000 viewers on NBCSN, up 8% from last year (254K) despite facing the NBA Draft. … Last Sunday’s Formula 1 Turkish Grand Prix averaged 449,000 viewers on ESPN. It was the first edition of the race since 2011.
* The day of the memorial service for Kobe and Gianna Bryant.
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 11.20, ESPN PR 11.17, Boxing Scene 11.17, ShowBuzz Daily 11.17 a, b, 11.19]
