There’s not much doubt about which sport Americans consider their national pastime.
DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares) and total viewership (thousands of people over the age of 2).
Ratings analysis and comparisons follow the chart.
FOX: WORLD SERIES GAME 5 had a preliminary 2.7, a whopping 1.1 below last year’s Game 5, which to be fair aired on a Monday, when NFL football is on cable and there’s no WALKING DEAD. (Note: higher numbers elsewhere include the PREGAME hour, which is currently listed as having outrated the game and was itself probably boosted by NFL football overrun viewers.) Still, last year’s Game 5 adjusted up to 4.1, and this year’s will be considerably lower. The good news for FOX is that the Series is guaranteed to reach 6 games, and it’s in Games 6-7 that baseball scores its best ratings.
ABC: It seems unlikely that there was a huge overlap between the audience for ABC’s soaps and the World Series, but nevertheless it was a low night for the network’s dramas. A 7PM special broadcast of STAR WARS REBELS was at 0.6, half a point below last week’s AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS, and then ONCE UPON A TIME, RESURRECTION and REVENGE all hit lows (all-time lows, for the latter two), with ONCE down 0.4 to 2.3, RESURRECTION down 0.2 to 1.2, and REVENGE down 0.2 to 1.1.
CBS: The network had the national late NFL game this week, which doubled 60 MINUTES to 2.4 and also sent the primetime line-up off-schedule by half an hour (if CSI aired, it was out of primetime in most of the country). MADAM SECRETARY are both currently listed as steady, at 1.5 and 1.4 respectively.
NBC: SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL easily won the night (pending the WALKING DEAD numbers), with a preliminary 6.4, down 0.6 from last week’s game.
It’s time for THE BIG BANG THEORY to move back to Thursdays, which means that tonight 2 BROKE GIRLS will inherit the daunting task of leading the network’s Monday night line-up. That will leave THE MILLERS unprotected for the first time in its history, so those are the ratings to watch tonight.
COMPARISONS TO SIMILAR NIGHTS: Preliminary adult 18-49 ratings versus the same night last year and same night last week.
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