Thursday ratings for last night, the same night last year and last week. The format of the chart has been changed slightly to make comparisons to last year and last week easier to read. If you have any additional suggestions or comments, please let us know.
Last night’s fast nationals are unusually impacted by live sports programming, in this case six NFL pre-season games which were carried nationally on cable but also broadcast locally on network-affiliated stations in the markets with a team on the field. Generally, the fast national ratings for ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX listed below will drop two or three tenths of a rating point in the official nationals later today when the local NFL audience is excluded from the ratings. When the dust settles, The Winner Is… and Hollywood Game Night will be right back to where they were last week. America did not suddenly get a hankering for some low-end game show programs on Thursday network TV.
However, Big Brother has a good shot at holding close to the 2.5 rating in the official nationals because the CBS markets carrying NFL games were mostly in the Pacific time zone. See below for a more complete discussion of last night’s NFL pre-emptions.
Each of the four broadcast networks had their Thursday lineups pre-empted completely or shifted to overnight hours in markets covering about 4% of the country. With primarily Eastern and Central markets affected, NBC and ABC lost all of prime time to the NFL games in the listed markets. CBS has a high market total with pre-emptions (almost 6%), but their markets fall mostly in the Pacific time zone. With the games ending between 9 and 10 pm local time, Big Brother was cleared in prime time in all markets below except Denver (at 10 pm, albeit at a later than normal time).
Pre-emptions for NFL preseason (with market ranking and market size):
Mostly Eastern and Central markets — all of prime time impacted
NBC (4.16% of US): #8 Washington DC 2.07%, #18 Cleveland 1.30%, #35 Cincinnati 0.79%
ABC (3.88% of US): #9 Atlanta 2.04%, #27 Baltimore 0.95%, #29 Nashville 0.89%
Mostly Western markets — more limited impact, mostly early prime time
CBS (5.72% of US): #6 San Fran-Oakland 2.19%, #17 Denver 1.37%, #20 Sacramento 1.22%, #28 San Diego 0.94%
FOX (2.68% of US): #12 Seattle 1.59%, #21 St Louis 1.09%
About the Author
