The night was dominated by football and its aftereffects, but there were some other (dimmer) bright spots. Note: we don’t yet have a rating for the PBS season debut of Downton Abbey.
FOX: Our projection is that the overrun of the NFC WILD CARD PLAYOFF GAME, which pushed the network’s primetime schedule by about 7 minutes, should end up with around a massive 15 rating in 18-49s when timezone adjustments are made. (See Mitch Metcalf’s Skedball post for more details about the weekend’s sports ratings.) With that as lead-in, we think THE SIMPSONS will have a 4.9, hugely higher even than the 3.5 it had in December when football gave it a big cushion. At 8:30 (ish), BOB’S BURGERS was at 3.2, up 0.8 from its last episode. Then things stabilized, as FAMILY GUY was even with its post-football 3.0 in December, and AMERICAN DAD was up 0.1 to 2.5.
NBC: The network’s first non-football Sunday was naturally nowhere near the level it’s maintained all fall. Still, a BEST OF LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON clip show garnered the best non-FOX rating of the night at 2.0, particularly heartening since it served as a super-sized promo for Fallon’s takeover of The Tonight Show next month.
ABC: A special Sunday cycle premiere of THE BACHELOR was at 1.8–not a great number, but seemingly much more compatible with REVENGE than Once Upon A Time has been, as the soap perked up to 1.8, up 0.3 from its last airing and the best it’s done in months. The gain didn’t extent to 10PM, though, where BETRAYAL remained mired at 0.8.
CBS: Facing the game on FOX, 60 MINUTES hit a season low 1.2, and the network didn’t do the rest of its line-up any favors by plugging the 8PM Amazing Race hole with a 1.0 rerun of ELEMENTARY. After that, another splendid episode of THE GOOD WIFE was at 1.4, down 0.2 from its last episode, and THE MENTALIST was at 1.5, down 0.3.
The pickings are lean on the networks tonight, probably because of the BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME on ESPN. CBS is taking the opportunity to rid itself of the last 2 hours of HOSTAGES before INTELLIGENCE arrives next week (after a “preview” episode on Tuesday), ABC continues its season premiere of THE BACHELOR, and FOX throws away a fresh episode of ALMOST HUMAN.
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