Saddled with another subpar matchup, Thursday Night Football hit a new season-low in ratings and viewership.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Falcons-Panthers) averaged a 3.3 rating and 6.8 million viewers on Amazon Prime, marking the lowest rated and least-watched edition of TNF this season and the least-watched overall since a Week 4 Broncos-Jets game two years ago (~5.4M).
The Panthers’ win marked the fourth of the past six TNF games to set a new season-low. The previous mark was 7.82 million for Saints-Cardinals three weeks earlier.
Amazon’s full season average is now below the ten million mark at 9.65 million (11.4 million according to Amazon’s internal metrics).
Viewership fell by half compared to Week 9 last year — (Ravens-Dolphins: ~12.9M) — but the decline in adults 18-34 was in the single-digits. The game had a 2.3 rating in the demo, off a tick from last year’s 2.4 (pending revision).
TNF is now averaging 2.24 million viewers in 18-34, up 20% from last year on FOX and NFL Network (1.86M). Viewership is also up in 18-49, inching up 1% (from 4.85M to 4.91M). Viewers under 55 account for a full two-thirds of the TNF audience this season, compared to 53% last year.
For the first time this season, Thursday Night Football was outdrawn by a non-sports program. The CBS series “Young Sheldon” was Thursday’s most-watched show with 7.13 million viewers, though it was of course nowhere close to TNF in the young adult demos.
(Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 11.11, Amazon PR)
