Football was the big winner

The NBC “Sunday Night Football” game between the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers drew the largest audience for any prime-time program since the Oscars in March lured 23.68 million viewers, in a week football accounted for eight of the week’s top 10 programs.

The final episode of “The Walking Dead” with Andrew Lincoln was first among entertainment programs on cable and 40th overall, averaging 5.41 million viewers. This was the AMC horror series’ second-largest audience of its ninth season, trailing only the season premiere Oct. 7, which averaged 6.08 million. Viewership trailed all 16 episodes of the previous season.

The only two entertainment programs to crack the top 10 were on CBS. “The Big Bang Theory” was fourth for the week, averaging 12.65 million viewers, and “NCIS,” fifth, averaging 12.32 million, according to live-plus-sameday figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.

CBS was the mostwatched network for the third time in the six-weekold 2018-19 television season, averaging 8.02 million viewers for its prime-time programming between Oct. 29 and Sunday.

CBS’ football boost came from Saturday’s matchup between top-ranked Alabama and fourth-ranked LSU, which drew the largest viewership for a college game this season, averaging 11.54 million viewers, eighth for the week.

CBS had four of the week’s five most-watched entertainment programs, including “FBI,” the week’s most-watched new series, which was fifth among entertainment programs and 14th overall, averaging 9.42 million viewers.

NBC was second for the third consecutive week, averaging 7.83 million viewers. Its 10-minute “Sunday Night Football” pregame show was third for the week, averaging 17.42 million viewers while the 24-minute third segment of “Football Night in America” was seventh for the week, averaging 11.68 million.

NBC’s most-watched entertainment program was Monday’s “The Voice,” 13th for the week, averaging 9.46 million viewers.