ABC kickoff boffo
'Monday Night Football' scores demo goal
Same can't be said for the net's "Drew Carey Show," which already looks shaky in its new Monday slot.
According to Nielsen, the Pittsburgh-New England matchup (19.08 million viewers, 8.3/24 in adults 18-49) was down slightly vs. last year's New York Giants-Denver opener, but it did log the franchise's best season-opening ratings among adults 18-34 (8.4/27) in three years and its best among the key football sales demo of men 18-34 (12.0/37) since 1996.
The first regular season contest for the announcing team of Al Michaels and John Madden was up 25% year-to-year in men 18-34. ABC is hoping the addition of Madden will boost Nielsens for the long-running franchise, which remains a top-10 power despite gradual ratings erosion over the years.
"MNF" is poised to deliver some of its best numbers of the season the next two weeks with its Philadelphia-Washington and St. Louis-Tampa Bay matchups.
National ratings for Sunday show that Fox's late-afternoon game (St. Louis-Denver in most of the country) averaged 21.4 million viewers -- the largest opening-week aud for any Sunday game in the eight years that Fox has been televising the NFL. And ESPN averaged 12.1 million viewers for its Sunday night game (Dallas-Houston), the cabler's third-largest aud ever.
Elsewhere Monday, ABC's veteran laffer "The Drew Carey Show" got off to a sluggish start in its new 8 p.m. timeslot (10 p.m. in the West, after football). "Drew" did top its all-repeat half-hour competish in adults 18-49 (3.1/11) but that's the skein's lowest score ever for an original episode.
"Drew," which was airing on Monday for the first time and preempted in roughly 4% of the country, fell behind a repeat of CBS comedy "King of Queens" in total viewers (7.60m vs. 8.78m).
At 8:30, season premiere of "Whose Line Is It Anyway" built on its "Drew" 18-49 lead-in (3.4/11), also winning its slot.
