'Football' scores win for NBC in ratings

Cowboys vs. Eagles game dominates night

By RICK KISSELL

NBC’s highest-rated “Sunday Night Football” contest of the television season, featuring the Dallas Cowboys against the Philadelphia Eagles, dominated last night’s primetime ratings race, sending top entertainment series on rival nets to season lows.

Preliminary estimates for live sports action are always a bit murky, but Sunday’s 20-16 victory by the Cowboys in an NFL matchup of division rivals averaged a 7.6 rating/19 share in adults 18-49 and 19.8 million viewers on the NBC affiliates from 8:30 to 11 p.m. The national numbers are expected to rise by more than 10% as action went until about 11:45 p.m. ET and the game’s outcome wasn’t decided until the final minutes.

When Nielsen issues the final numbers Tuesday, the game is expected to rate as the highest of the television season for “SNF” and the best since its Week 2 matchup between the Cowboys and New York Giants on Sept. 20 (9.8/26 in 18-49, 24.82 million viewers overall), which took place on the eve of the TV season and opposite the Emmy Awards telecast on CBS.

The big game took a toll on the competition, including ABC, whose “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” (3.0/7 in 18-49, 10.4 million viewers overall), “Desperate Housewives” (4.3/10 in 18-49, 13.3 million viewers overall) and “Brothers & Sisters” (2.9/8 in 18-49, 9.1 million viewers overall) all were at or near season lows. “Housewives,” however, stood as the No. 1 entertainment series of the night for a fifth straight week.

Fox’s 8:30 p.m. special “Family Guy Presents Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show” averaged a 3.4/8 in 18-49 and 6.6 million viewers overall, lower than the original episodes of “Family Guy” surrounding it at 8 p.m. (3.7/9 in 18-49, 7.4 million viewers overall) and 9 p.m. (4.0/9 in 18-49, 7.7 million viewers overall); the regular 9 p.m. episode of “Family Guy” hit a season low. And closing out the night was a special 9:30 p.m. original episode of “The Cleveland Show” (3.2/7 in 18-49, 6.3 million viewers overall).

Numbers for CBS are rough estimates, as a football overrun spilled about 20 minutes into primetime and the net opted to start all of its entertainment series late in much of the country. From 7:20 to 8:20, “60 Minutes” looks to have averaged about a 3.7/9 in 18-49 and 16 million viewers overall, while “Amazing Race” should come in somewhere near a 3.1/8 in 18-49 and 10.5 million viewers overall. The net then fell off from there as usual with dramas “Three Rivers” (1.8/4 in 18-49, 7.7 million viewers overall) and “Cold Case” (1.7/4 in 18-49, 7.8 million viewers overall).

Preliminary 18-49 averages for the night: NBC, 6.2/16; CBS, 3.1/8; Fox, 3.1/8; ABC, 3.0/8; Univision, 0.9/2.

In total viewers: NBC, 16.5 million; CBS, 12.2 million; ABC, 9.8 million; Fox, 6.4 million; Univision, 2.3 million.