The NFL Once Again Is The 800 Lbs. Ratings Gorilla

Received this press release from the National Football League regarding the ratings for Week 3 and once again, they’re good. The late Sunday afternoon window featuring Indianapolis at Denver on CBS was the most watched program of the week and NBC’s Sunday Night game between the New York Jets and Miami was tops among primetime programming. And on cable, the Monday Night Football game on ESPN with Green Bay at Chicago was the 5th most watched show in history.

Is the NFL loved in America? Apparently so.

NFL GAMES TOP RATINGS IN 27 MARKETS IN “PREMIERE WEEK”

CBS National Game (mostly Colts-Broncos) Week’s Most-Watched Show

Packers-Bears on ESPN Most-Watched Show on Cable in 2010

NFL games topped the local ratings in 27 markets last week, which featured the premieres of many prime-time programs on the broadcast networks (up from 26 top-ranked NFL markets in “premiere week” last year and 19 in 2008).

NFL games compared favorably in local ratings to prime-time competition:

Program	# of NFL Markets Ranked #1
NFL Football	27
Dancing with the Stars premiere	1
Detroit 1-8-7 series premiere	1
Grey’s Anatomy premiere	1

The CBS national game (mostly Colts-Broncos) was the most-watched program on television last week (Sept. 20-26) with 23.1 million viewers.

Packers-Bears on ESPN Monday night (Sept. 27) drew cable’s largest audience of 2010 with 17.5 million viewers. ESPN Monday night games account for the top five and eight of the 10 most-watched shows in cable history.

Following is the list of 27 NFL markets where football was the top-rated program for the week of Sept. 20-26:

Week of 9/20–9/26			HH	HH	RTG
Market	Game	Date	RTG	SHR	Rank
New Orleans	Falcons at Saints	9/26/10	50.4	76	1
Pittsburgh	Steelers at Bucs	9/26/10	45.6	75	1
Indianapolis	Colts at Broncos	9/26/10	39.5	63	1
Kansas City	49ers at Chiefs	9/26/10	37.8	67	1
Baltimore	Browns at Ravens	9/26/10	34.5	64	1
Cincinnati	Bengals at Panthers	9/26/10	33.1	60	1
San Diego	Chargers at Seahawks	9/26/10	32.8	62	1
Dallas	Cowboys at Texans	9/26/10	32.7	62	1
Buffalo	Bills at Patriots	9/26/10	32.5	56	1
Minneapolis	Lions at Vikings	9/26/10	32.4	71	1
Nashville	Titans at Giants	9/26/10	31.2	54	1
Denver	Colts at Broncos	9/26/10	30.1	58	1
Boston	Bills at Patriots	9/26/10	29.3	62	1
Houston	Cowboys at Texans	9/26/10	28.8	54	1
Philadelphia	Eagles at Jaguars	9/26/10	27.6	46	1
St. Louis	Redskins at Rams	9/26/10	27.5	45	1
Jacksonville	Eagles at Jaguars	9/26/10	27.2	44	1
Washington, DC	Redskins at Rams	9/26/10	26.7	48	1
Phoenix	Raiders at Cardinals	9/26/10	26.0	48	1
Cleveland	Browns at Ravens	9/26/10	25.6	51	1
Charlotte	Bengals at Panthers	9/26/10	25.3	45	1
Atlanta	Falcons at Saints	9/26/10	25.1	43	1
Seattle	Chargers at Seahawks	9/26/10	24.5	51	1
Miami	Jets at Dolphins	9/26/10	24.0	36	1
San Fran-Oakland	Saints at 49ers	9/20/10	22.2	40	1
Milwaukee	Lions at Vikings	9/26/10	21.3	46	1
Tampa	Chargers at Seahawks (bonus coverage)	9/26/10	14.0	24	1

           

Source: NFL & The Nielsen Company

Coming up next, linkage. I’ll be working on that throughout the afternoon.