It was another strong week for the NFL, particularly on CBS.
CBS scored its largest Week 7 audience in a decade for Sunday’s NFL national window (mostly Chargers-Chiefs: 24.38M) had its most-watched Week 7 overall since returning to NFL coverage in 1998 (19.73M). As goes without saying, the national window delivered the largest television audience of the week. NBC’s Sunday Night Football got back over the 20 million mark for Dolphins-Eagles (20.61M), with viewership up a third from Steelers-Dolphins a year ago (15.53M).
In the college game, Penn State-Ohio State delivered the third-largest audience of a strong season with nearly ten million viewers on FOX. Tennessee-Alabama also delivered a top-ten audience, ranking eighth with just over eight million viewers on CBS.
Baseball’s League Championship Series took a hit from the football competition over the weekend, with neither Phillies-Diamondbacks Game 5 on TBS or Rangers-Astros Game 6 on FS1 getting to the five million viewer mark.
Also notable this past week, the #1 vs. #2 women’s college volleyball clash between Nebraska and Wisconsin averaged a 612,000 viewers on BTN — not only a record for the college volleyball regular season, but ahead of its Northwestern-Nebraska college football lead-in (560K).
Weekly sports ratings, October 16-22
Only events with at least 150,000 viewers are listed. Household ratings of 0.55 or below are shown to the second decimal point.
Sunday, October 22
Sunday’s NFL national window on CBS was the network’s most-watched Week 7 telecast in a decade.
Saturday, October 21
Game 5 of the NLCS was Saturday’s most-watched primetime sporting event, topping the competing Duke-Florida State college football game on ABC.
Friday, October 20
Baseball’s League Championship Series dominated a light Friday in sports TV last week.
Thursday, October 19
Thursday Night Football hit a season-low for Jaguars-Saints, but still delivered another double-digit increase.
Wednesday, October 18
The clinching game of the WNBA Finals delivered the league’s top Finals audience in six years.
Tuesday, October 17
Despite a 10-0 margin, more than five million viewers tuned into Game 2 of the NLCS last Tuesday.
Monday, October 16
ABC continues to account for the lion’s share of Monday Night Football viewing.
