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Another Sunday where there was football… and then everything else.
FOX: The early evening received a massive boost from the Giants vs. Green Bay game, which went down to the last second. That lifted THE SIMPSONS, ALLEN GREGORY and FAMILY GUY mightily although Gregory was still down 40% from the Simpsons number.
ABC: These are the perils of preempting your regular schedule for weeks in a row: ONCE UPON A TIME, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and PAN AM all hit season lows on their return. This was particularly troublesome for Once, because it did air last week and still went down another 10% from that number, losing to FOX for the hour. The night gets even messier from here on, as Housewives and Pan Am won’t be back till January, but Once airs another new episode next week.
CBS: Very stable, although CSI MIAMI was up a bit.
NBC: The network is entering the “flex” part of its football schedule, which allows it within certain limits to pick the games it wants to air on Sundays. Last night’s Detroit vs New Orleans game must have looked better on paper than it played, because although of course NBC won the night, it was one of the lower-rated games of the season. But next week’s Giants vs Cowboys game, a match-up of marquee teams with real playoff implications, should be a much bigger event. The bad news: only 4 more weeks of regular season games left for the Peacock.
Tonight, CBS airs a regular schedule (including what should be a pivotal episode of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) against preemptions elsewhere: a SING-OFF Christmas special on NBC, CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and PREP AND LANDING cartoons on ABC, and the AMERICAN COUNTRY AWARDS on FOX.
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