Football Blowout on NBC Wins Ratings Race on Sleepy Sunday

It was the most lopsided result of the NFL season, but the Philadelphia Eagles’ 54-11 trouncing of the Chicago Bears on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” helped the net dominate ratings on a night that also saw ABC post year-over-year gains for its annual rebroadcast of the original “Sound of Music” movie.

Preliminary estimates for live events are always subject to revision, but the football game on NBC averaged a 5.5 rating/16 share in adults 18-49 and 16 million viewers overall on the net’s stations from 8:30 to 11 p.m., with these numbers expected to rise a bit in the nationals. This will certainly be among the lower rated “SNF” games of the season, but it still crushed everything on the night.

The game did a 30.6 household rating/46 share in Philadelphia and a 28.2/44 in the Windy City. It also did a big 19.9/32in Milwaukee, a reflection of interest by fans of the Green Bay Packers, who play at Chicago this coming Sunday in a game that will decide the NFC North division.

At ABC, “The Sound of Music” averaged a 1.3/4 in 18-49 and 6.5 million viewers overall from 7 to 11 p.m., the theatrical’s best demo score in three years and its largest overall audience in six years. It’s likely that NBC’s recent live version of the musical (which actually was based on the Broadway production) helped boost interest in the 1965 classic starring Julie Andrews.

Numbers for CBS are also murky, as NFL action aired until about 7:45 p.m. ET. From 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., which was mostly “60 Minutes,” the net did a 3.6/11 in 18-49 and 16.2 million viewers overall. It was followed by encores of “The Good Wife” (1.1/3 in 18-49, 7.0 million viewers overall), “The Mentalist” (0.7/2 in 18-49, 4.9 million viewers overall) and “Elementary” (0.7/2 in 18-49, 5.0 million viewers overall).

Fox didn’t have national NFL coverage in the early evening, but its opening-hour numbers figure to be sketchy due to games airing in some markets until around 7:30 p.m. ET. As it stands now, a repeat “Bob’s Burgers” did a 2.0/6 in 18-49 and 7.7 million viewers overall, and a repeat “American Dad” did a 1.7/5 in 18-49 and 3.5 million viewers overall. Back-to-back episodes of “The Simpsons” did a 1.6/5 and 1.7/5 in 18-49 while drawing about 3.5 million viewers overall. Closing out the night were a repeat of “Family Guy” (1.7/5 in 18-49, 3.4 million viewers overall) and a special encore of latenight’s “Animation Domination High-Def” (1.0/3 in 18-49, 2.2 million viewers overall).

Preliminary 18-49 averages for the night: NBC, 4.4/13; CBS, 2.1/6; Fox, 1.6/5; ABC, 1.3/4; Univision, 0.9/3; Telemundo, 0.4/1.

In total viewers: NBC, 13.1 million; CBS, 10.3 million; ABC, 6.5 million; Fox, 4.0 million; Univision, 2.7 million; Telemundo, 1.0 million.

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