Fox scores with NFC
Championship game gives the network a boost over rivals; CBS comes in second.
Fox’s coverage of the NFC championship game was the most-watched prime-time television program since the Super Bowl LI postgame show, but viewership was down 7.5% from the last time Fox carried a prime-time NFL conference championship game.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ 38-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday averaged 42.3 million viewers, according to live-plus-sameday figures released Tuesday by Nielsen. The last time Fox aired the NFC championship game in prime time was on Jan. 24, 2016, when the Carolina Panthers’ 49-15 victory over the Arizona Cardinals averaged 45.74 million viewers.
The New England Patriots’ 24-20 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday afternoon, before the start of prime-time, was seen by 44.08 million viewers, according to Nielsen, down from last year’s early NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons, which had 46.3 million viewers.
The premiere of medical drama “The Resident,” which followed 25 minutes of NFC championship postgame coverage, averaged 8.65 million viewers, 14th among prime-time programs airing on broadcast and cable networks between Jan. 15 and Sunday and 11th among entertainment programs.
The NFC championship game made Fox the mostwatched network for the first time since the week of Oct. 30-Nov. 5, when it aired the final two games of the World Series, averaging 10.6 million viewers for its 16 hours of prime-time programming.
CBS was second, averaging 6.92 million viewers, followed by ABC, which averaged 4.74 million, and NBC, which averaged 4.69 million.
CBS had the top three most-watched entertainment programs and seven of the top nine, topped by “The Big Bang Theory,” which averaged 14.92 million viewers, fourth overall, behind the NFC championship game and its two postgame shows.
NBC’s most-watched program was the drama “This Is Us,” seventh for the week and fourth among entertainment programs (9.82 million viewers). First-year drama “The Good Doctor” was ABC’s most-seen program, ninth for the week and sixth among entertainment programs, averaging 9.33 million viewers, its largest audience since Nov. 20. Here are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (Jan. 15-21), as compiled by Nielsen. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish during its scheduled telecast or on a playback device the same day. Nielsen estimates there are 289 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions.