Burdened by a lightning delay, stronger competition, and the inexplicable presence of the Bears, the return of Thursday Night Football on CBS held up as well as one could expect.
Bears-Packers earned an 8.9 rating and 14.6 million viewers on the season’s first Thursday Night Football simulcast on CBS and NFL Network, down 6% in ratings and 5% in viewership from the first simulcast last year, Jets-Bills (9.5, 15.4M), and down 31% in both measures from the first simulcast in 2015, Broncos-Chiefs (12.9, 21.1M). Both of those games took place in Week 2.
Compared to last year’s Week 4 TNF game, Dolphins-Bengals exclusively on NFL Network, ratings and viewership increased 85% from a 4.8 and 7.9 million. Last year’s Packers-Bears Thursday Night Football game, which aired in Week 7, had an 8.6 and 14.2 million.
The Packers’ easy win peaked with a 10.0 and 16.6 million from 9-9:16 PM ET, just as the game entered a 47-minute lightning delay.
Live streaming coverage on Amazon averaged 372,000 viewers, up 53% from Jets-Bills on Twitter last year (243K). Both this year and last, those figures include international viewers. Adding in the audience on CBS and NFL Digital platforms, total streaming viewership was 488,000 (+55%), bringing the total audience up to 15.1 million — down just 2% from last year.
Thursday’s game had substantially stronger competition than last year, when Jets-Bills faced a line-up of reruns on the other major networks. The top non-football draw last year was a re-run of Grey’s Anatomy on ABC (3.5M). Nine shows last night had a larger audience, led by NBC’s returning Will & Grace (10.2M) and a new Grey’s Anatomy (8.1M).
Ratings declined disproportionately in all young adult demographics, falling 11% in adults 18-49 (from 5.4 to 4.8), adults 18-34 (from 4.5 to 4.0) and adults 25-54 (from 6.3 to 5.6). The night of Jets-Bills last year, no competing show exceeded a 0.8 in adults 18-49. Nine did last night, topped by a 3.0 for Will & Grace and a 2.3 for Grey’s Anatomy.
[Thu. numbers from CBS PR, ShowBuzz Daily 9.29]
