‘Thursday Night Football’ Ratings Down As Raiders Score Close Win Over Chiefs
It was a good night for California teams as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs to move on to the World Series and the Oakland Raiders pulled off a last minute comeback over the Kansas City Chiefs to win at home.
Ending a four-game losing streak for the Bay Area team, that 31-30 victory on Thursday Night Football also came as Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch was booted out of the game for bumping hard into a line judge. In the first NFL game since the league issued its non-rule on whether players would be made to stand for the national anthem or not on October 17, Lynch along with the Chiefs’ Ukeme Eligwe ignored the likes of Donald Trump and sat during the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in protest.
With all that drama and the competition of the MLB National League Championship series clincher on TBS, Thursday Night Football snared a 9.9/17 in metered market results on CBS and the NFL Network.
In Week 7 of a season that has seen NFL ratings down over 15% on CBS from last year, that’s down 7% from the Philadelphia Eagles’ 28-23 October 12 win over the Carolina Panthers in the early numbers – which was down 5% from the week before.
Last night’s TNF matches the season low for the CBS and NFL Network-aired September 28 opener, which was down 13% from the year before. As NFL ratings overall have slumped about 8% this season so far, last week’s Week 6 TNF went on to score a total viewership of 14.6 million, which was down 5% from the week before and even with Week 6 of the 2016-2017 season.
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On a longer trajectory, last night’s TNF was up 5% versus the comparable Green Bay Packers 26-10 win over the Chicago Bears on October 21, 2016 – a CBS and NFL Network simulcast match-up that faced the Cubs and Dodgers Game 5 of the NLCS on Fox Sports and the pre-taped The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again on Fox itself.
As for last night’s big win by the Dodgers, that 2017 NLCS Game 5 hit a 3.9 MM rating for TBS. With TNF competition, it’s not the best the series has done this year but the game was the top show on cable and up 63% over comparable LCS coverage on the Turner outlet last year
We’ll update with more TNF ratings later plus more on that Dodgers win and the rest of what was on the Big 4 last night later. As things stand right now, CBS easily won the night among all the networks. Also, last night’s NFL game, which was also shown on Amazon Prime, peaked in the 11:30 – midnight ET slot with an 11.3/23.
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