In what should surprise no one, anywhere, NBC’s Sunday Night Football matchup of the New England Patriots vs Indianapolis Colts easily beat TBS’s NLCS game 2 between the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets in the battle of overnight ratings. The NFL contest garnered 14.6% of the households in the top 56 markets compared to only 4.8% for the game on TBS.
But it was CBS’s late afternoon Window that ruled the day with 15.5% of households in the top 56 markets tuning-in to either Green Bay vs. San Diego or Baltimore vs San Francisco.
Plenty of PR spin to go around for all though. The Sunday Night Football contest had the NFL’s best primetime numbers against an MLB League Championship Series since the Redskins-Cowboys game on ABC in 1997 pulled-in 16.4% of the households. Pats-Colts was up 26% versus last year’s Eagles-Giants and the best week 6 game for Sunday Night Football in 10 years.
The 4.8 for game two of the Cubs-Mets NLCS was up 60% versus last year’s game 2 of the Royals-Orioles ALCS that aired on TBS.
Overnight household rating = the live+same day DVR overnight metered-market household rating from the top 56 Nielsen television markets. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) account for about 70% of the US TV-viewing population. The overnight household rating is the percentage of the households that were tuned-in in those market