Football drives viewership
NBC is No. 1 for the week with sports and ‘The Voice.’ Other networks also hit turf.
With “Saturday Night Football” and the final two episodes of the fall season of “The Voice” accounting for three of the week’s six mostwatched programs, NBC returned to the top of the television ratings after a oneweek absence.
NBC averaged 6.85 million viewers for its primetime programming between Dec. 18 and Sunday for its sixth victory in the past seven weeks, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Wednesday by Nielsen.
CBS finished second, averaging 5.57 million viewers, a week after averaging 7.93 million viewers to finish first in a week it had a 38-minute runover of its afternoon NFL coverage into prime time average 29.72 million viewers.
ABC averaged 3.33 million viewers to finish third for the second consecutive week after two fourth-place finishes.
Fox averaged 2.87 million viewers for its 15 hours of prime-time programming to finish fourth among the broadcast networks for the 40th time in the past 45 weeks.
Fox was the beneficiary of a 27-minute runover of its NFL coverage into prime time. Viewership figures for the runover were not available. The runover is not considered a separate program but is included in the weekly average.
The runover was followed by a 33-minute edition of its NFL postgame show “The OT,” which averaged 12.757 million viewers to finish second for the week.
Fox’s most-watched program outside of its NFL programming was a rerun of “The Simpsons” that averaged 5.139 million viewers following “The OT” to finish 25th for the week.
The Minnesota Vikings’ 16-0 victory over the Green Bay Packers on “Saturday Night Football” was the week’s most-watched program, averaging 15.287 million viewers.
The week’s top 12 included three episodes of “The Voice” and two other elements of NBC’s NFL programming.
The two-hour Monday episode of “The Voice” was fifth for the week, averaging 11.022 million viewers, the two-hour Tuesday episode sixth for the week, averaging 10.907 million viewers, and an hourlong recap of Monday’s episode that aired before the Tuesday episode was 12th for the week, averaging 7.91 million viewers.
The 10-minute “Saturday Night Football” kickoff show was fourth for the week, averaging 11.023 million viewers, and the 20-minute third segment of “Football Night in America” 11th, averaging 8.036 million viewers.
NBC received a boost from the premiere of the Ellen DeGeneres-hosted game show “Ellen’s Game of Games,” which was second in its 10-11 p.m. time slot Dec. 18 and 13th for the week, averaging 7.247 million viewers.
CBS’ first-year comedy “Young Sheldon” was the week’s most-watched scripted program, third for the week, averaging 11.318 million viewers.
A “Monday Night Football” game on ESPN was the most-watched cable program for the ninth consecutive week, with the Atlanta Falcons’ 24-21 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Dec. 18 averaging 9.456 million viewers to finish seventh overall.
ESPN was the week’s most-watched cable network for the second consecutive week after back-toback third-place finishes, averaging 2.52 million viewers.
Hallmark Channel was second for the fifth consecutive week, averaging 2.508 million viewers. are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable television last week (Dec. 18-24), 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.