For viewers not watching sports or zombies last night–however few of them there were–TV offered a gangbusters episode of The Good Wife and a superb hour from Masters of Sex (although the less said about Homeland, perhaps, the better). Note: we’ve adjusted the NBC and FOX sports numbers to where we think they’ll end up in final numbers tomorrow; CBS ratings are also preliminary due to East Coast overruns of afternoon football.
FOX: We expect WORLD SERIES GAME 4 to end up with around a 4.8, which would be just about even with last year’s 4.7 Game 4. The Series scored far above FOX’s usual animation ratings, and now FOX knows there will be at least 2 more games, which should push the Series into solid profit for the network. (A Halloween Game 7, of course, would be even better.)
NBC: Against the strongest of non-football sports competition, SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL should adjust to 6.4, down a big 36% from last week, and also down 0.6 from last year’s game that aired against the Series.
CBS: There wasn’t much for CBS and ABC to do against this competition (not to mention The Walking Dead on cable). In preliminary numbers, 60 MINUTES took its usual hit when not preceded by the national afternoon NFL game, down 1.3 from last week to 1.5. THE AMAZING RACE fell 0.2 to 1.7, which if that number holds would be a series low. CBS gave THE GOOD WIFE as much promotion as the show’s had in a long time, and the episode was sensational, but was only able to hold even at 1.4. THE MENTALIST is currently up 0.1 to 1.3.
ABC: The only network unaffected by sports wasn’t able to do much with that distinction. ONCE UPON A TIME was up 0.1 to 2.2, REVENGE was even at 1.5, and BETRAYAL rose 0.1 to 1.0.
FOX has WORLD SERIES GAME 5 tonight, which faces all-new programming on the other networks except for CBS’s final BIG BANG THEORY rerun in the 9PM slot before MIKE & MOLLY returns next week.
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