The Patriots were less of a draw on Thursday Night Football than a year ago.
Patriots-Buccaneers had a 9.4 rating and 15.4 million viewers on CBS and NFL Network Thursday night, down 11% in ratings and 12% in viewership from the second CBS simulcast last season, Texans-Patriots (10.6, 17.5M), and down 10% and 9% respectively from the second simulcast in 2015, Washington-Giants (10.5, 16.9M). Those games took place in Week 3 of the season.
Compared to last year’s Week 5 TNF game, 49ers-Cardinals on CBS and NFL Network, ratings increased 27% from 7.4 and viewership 28% from 12.1 million.
The Patriots’ narrow win, which peaked with 17.8 million TV viewers from 9:30-10 PM ET, had a streaming audience of 525,000 on Amazon Prime and the various CBS and NFL digital platforms — up 32% from Texans-Patriots last year (398K). The combined TV and streaming audience of 16.0 million trailed last year by 11% (17.9M).
Thursday’s game had a 5.0 rating in adults 18-49, down 18% from last year (6.1) and 17% from 2015 (6.0). It was easily the night’s top program on television, more-than-doubling the second-place finisher, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (2.1).
Unlike last year’s Texans-Patriots game, which took place in September, last night’s matchup aired opposite playoff baseball on Fox Sports 1. The competing Yankees-Indians game had a 2.3 rating and 3.8 million viewers.
[Thu. numbers from NFL, Programming Insider 10.6]
