The Sked: Sunday Week Two

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NBC will win another Sunday in the fall, although it will be one of the lower-rated Sunday Night Football nights of the season.  The 5.3 rating with Adults 18-49 in the fast nationals from 7:30-11 pm last night should go up to a 6.0 rating for the night when the Pacific and Mountain time zone viewing is properly counted.  CBS rose from last week to a preliminary 3.2 rating for the night, exactly where it should be when it has the NFL afternoon doubleheader games.  Conversely, FOX fell sharply from last week to a 2.6 rating in prime time (actually a little bit ahead of a typical night without the late afternoon national NFL game).  ABC slid half a rating point from Premiere Sunday last week to a 2.3 rating in prime, already lagging our fall projection for the network on this night.

ABC is headed for some choppy waters this fall on Sunday.  Although America’s Funniest Home Videos premiered last night at its usual, unremarkable 1.5 rating at 7 pm, each of the three scripted dramas dropped four to six tenths of a rating from last week, with each already lagging behind our fall projections.  666 Park Avenue is already below a 2 rating and well behind the Pan Am pace at this time last year — not looking good.  Once Upon a Time and Revenge are certainly at respectable levels, but ABC really needs to see them hold at these ratings or inch up slightly in October/November.

Last night’s game between the San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints is currently at a 6.2 rating in the fast nationals, and that game rating should rise to a 7.0 in the official nationals (and perhaps a 7.2 given all the southern California viewing not accurately reflected in the fast national number).  The pre-game ratings from 7:30-8:30 will be added to the chart after the official nationals — the fast nationals numbers for Football Night in America and the Pregame Show are always just too misleading.

FOX’s 2.0 rating in the 7:00 half hour is very suspect.  Although CBS had the national late afternoon game, FOX aired two games in the 4 pm window from Carolina and Jacksonville regionally.  The NFL viewing in a handful a markets is inflating the half hour, which will probably drop to around the 1.3 rating we forecast for FOX on weeks when CBS has the national doubleheader.  Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad all turned in slightly higher ratings than we would expect on a night when FOX is not pumped up by the national NFL doubleheader.

CBS certainly got a lift for 60 Minutes from the NFL late game (the main story centered on a suspicious Chinese technology company), but the rest of the lineup got absolutely no benefit from the end of Denver-New England running into prime time.