Thursday Night Football ratings held up despite the presence of the moribund Giants.
FOX and NFL Network earned a combined 8.9 rating and 14.70 million viewers for the Week 6 edition of Thursday Night Football, flat in ratings and up 1% in viewership from last year (Eagles-Panthers: 8.9, 14.59M) and up 20% and 22% respectively from the third TNF simulcast in 2016, which took place in Week 5 (49ers-Cardinals: 7.4, 12.07M).
Versus the comparable Week 6 game in 2016 (Broncos-Chargers), ratings increased 2% (from 8.7) and viewership 1% (from 14.49M).
Including streaming and Spanish-language viewership, the game had 15.3 million — up 2% from last year (15.1M).
Keep in mind Thursday’s game did not face significant sports competition. Neither American League Division Series extended to a fifth game. Last year’s game aired opposite a Game 5 between the Cubs and Nationals (4.1, 7.0M).
TNF scored a 4.7 rating in adults 18-49, up a tick from last year (4.6) and up 15% from the third simulcast in ’16 (4.1). Ratings also increased a tick in adults 25-54 (from 5.4 to 5.5) and — in a rarity — adults 18-34 (from 3.8 to 3.9).
Eagles-Giants comfortably topped the night’s second-place show, “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS, beating the sitcom by 13% in viewership (14.7M to 12.9M) and winning each of the key demographics by at least 57 percent. On the comparable night last year, FOX topped out 3.7 million viewers and did not exceed a 1.3 rating in any key demo for a line-up of “Gotham” and “The Orville.”
[Numbers from NFL PR 10.12, Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 10.12]
