It did not necessarily do well, but a tie-game with no touchdowns did a lot better than it had to on NBC.
The Week 7 Seahawks/Cardinals Sunday Night Football game had a 10.2 final rating and 17.7 million viewers on NBC, down 16% in ratings and 14% in viewership from Eagles/Panthers last year (12.2, 20.6M) and down 26% in both measures from 49ers/Broncos in 2014 (13.8, 23.8M).
The 6-6 draw ranks as the lowest rated Week 7 edition of SNF since Colts/Saints opposite the World Series in 2011 (7.6) and the least-watched since Steelers/Bengals the following year (17.5M). All eight Sunday Night Football games this season have hit a multi-year ratings low.
Sunday’s game marked a recovery from the previous two weeks, when SNF failed to reach a double-digit rating or 17 million viewers for Giants/Packers and Colts/Texans. The former aired opposite the second presidential debate and the latter faced the MLB National League Championship Series.
This week’s game had tough competition of its own from the season premiere of The Walking Dead. The AMC show nearly matched SNF in viewership (17.0M) and trounced the game by 40% in the adults 18-49 demographic (8.4 to 6.0). It was an even bigger blowout in adults 18-34, with The Walking Dead winning by 56% (7.5 to 4.8).
The aforementioned 6.0 rating in adults 18-49 dropped 21% from Eagles/Panthers last year (7.6) and a 27% drop from 49ers/Broncos in ’14 (8.2).
In a rough season for NFL ratings, Seahawks/Cardinals earned the second-best figures for a primetime game in the past four weeks — behind only Chiefs/Steelers (10.3, 18.1M). Those two games, neither of which did particularly well, are the only primetime games over that span to have a double-digit rating.
