TV Ratings: ‘Sunday Night Football’ Rises, ‘Once Upon A Time’ Fall Finale & Barbara Walters’ ‘Fascinating People’ Special Down

It’s almost always an event when the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday Night Football (7.7/21) and the Lone Star State team’s 38-27 victory wasn’t the only solid win last night. NBC and the NFL saw a 26% rise among adults 18-49 from the fast nationals of last week’s New England Patriots as they beat the San Diego Chargers. That Patriots winning game eventually scored a 7.1/20 in the final nationals.

Like with all live events, last night’s SNF numbers will change in the final nationals but it is pretty clear that NBC has won the night with a 6.2/17 rating and 17.901 million viewers in the preliminary results.

While we wait for final numbers, to show the sheer market strength of last night’s match-up, the 14.9/24 metered market rating is a stellar 37% rise from the comparable week last year when the Cincinnati Bengals played the Pittsburgh Steelers. With a 7% rise from last week, last night’s game is also the best SNF has done since Week 1 of the NFL season – no doubt helped in some part by the absence for the second week of AMC’s The Walking Dead as direct competition. The 39.56 local MM rating in Dallas is the best a Cowboys game has done at home on SNF since December 11, 2011.

Over on ABC, there were the unsurprising ends and new beginnings of a sort on the Once Upon A Time (1.7/5) fall finale last night. There was a lot of gravity at play as well as OUAT was down 15% from last week in fast nationals to a series low. It was also down 10% from the December 15, 2013 OUAT fall finale of last year.

That loss of ground and a strong SNF over on NBC became a bit of a landslide for OUAT lead-out Barbara Walters Presents: The Most Fascinating People Of 2014 (1.4/4). Even with the likes of Taylor Swift, David Koch, Chelsea Handler, upcoming Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris, Game Of Thrones author George R. R. Martin and Amal Clooney populating the list, the annual special fell a hard 36% from its December 18 broadcast last year. Ending its night with a special, ABC also started its Sunday primetime with the soft Backstage With Disney On Broadway (0.5/1)

With its typical NFL overruns of up to 22 minutes in markets across the nation like NYC, Tampa and Charlotte, to name a few, CBS’ fast nationals are extremely tentative right now. As it stands, 60 Minutes got a 1.7/5 among the demo, a special Undercover Boss got a 1.7/5, The Mentalist garnered a 1.3/4 and CSI pulled a 1.2/4. Those will all likely see some change in the finals, however math fans, that Undercover Boss broadcast was steady with the Friday Season 5 debut on September 27 last year on a much less competitive night, with a 6% rise as the numbers stand right now.

Fox also had NFL overruns, which means its results are likely to change too. However, the network only had two originals on last night with Brooklyn Nine-Nine (1.5/4) at 8:30 PM and Bob’s Burgers (1.2/3) at 9:30 PM. The former fell 29% from last week’s results while the latter was down 25%.