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January 6, 2013
 

The Sked: Saturday Ratings — A Mediocre NFL Audience is Still Enormous

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Written by: Mitch Metcalf
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NBC’s prime time Wild Card game Saturday night (Minnesota at Green Bay) easily destroyed the competition — a 9.2 rating with Adults 18-49 from 8-11 pm against a 1.9 rating combined for CBS (0.8), FOX (0.7) and ABC (0.4).   The 9.2 fast national rating should rise to around a 10.6 rating in the official nationals.

But keep in mind this is still down from the 11.3 rating earned by the similar game last year (a more competitive Detroit at New Orleans on January 7, 2012).  In contrast, last night was the curse of a blow out. Yesterday’s game started at a very solid 10.0 rating in the 8:00 half hour (an estimated 11.5 rating in the official nationals), but crashed down to a 7.5 rating in the final half hour (an estimated 8.6 in the official nationals) when it was clear Minnesota was not coming back.

By the end of prime time, the game’s rating looked more like a garden variety regular season game than a playoff game.  Yet a soft NFL rating still towers over everything else on TV.



About the Author

Mitch Metcalf
MITCH METCALF has been tracking every US film release of over 500 screens (over 2300 movies and counting) since the storied weekend of May 20, 1994, when Maverick and Beverly Hills Cop 3 inspired countless aficionados to devote their lives to the art of cinema. Prior to that, he studied Politics and Economics at Princeton in order to prepare for his dream of working in television. He has been Head of West Coast Research at ABC, then moved to NBC in 2000 and became Head of Scheduling for 11 years.