They have the Super Bowl next year, but CBS’ run with Thursday Night Football (4.4/14) this season came to an end as Tom Brady and the New England Patriots decimated the Miami Dolphins 36-7. For the second week in a row for CBS and the NFL Network a lopsided result on the field broke the ratings rules and went up. This week saw a 19% rise among adults 18-49 from last week’s fast nationals of the Seattle Seahawks’ 20-3 pummeling of the San Francisco 49ers.
In metered market ratings, last night’s 8:30 – 11:15 PM rout on TNF got a 12.6/21 on CBS and NFL Network combined. That’s a nice 10% rise from the Seahawks win over the 49ers on October 23. As always with live NFL games, TNF numbers will be adjusted later today. Last week’s game went up to a 5.9/20 in the final numbers. In fast nationals CBS took the top spots for the night with a 4.1/14 rating and 12.77 million viewers.
With no World Series last night, Fox instead went for a bit of an All-Star play of its own with a crossover between Bones (1.3/5) and Sleepy Hollow (1.1/3). The almost seamless blending of the net’s Thursday shows saw the former bop up 8% from its October 23 airing. Sleepy Hollow, on the other hand, saw a very wide-awake 38% jump among the demo from the soft performance it had last week.
Over on NBC, new shows Heroes: Reborn (1.0/4) and the now clipped The Player (0.7/2) were down 9% and 13% from last week. Bookended by the two declines, the 9 PM The Blacklist (1.5/5) was basically steady with a 7% uptick against TNF and the rest of the nets from its October 23 show. Among the non-NFL offering on in its slot, the James Spader starrer came a far second to ABC’s Scandal (2.3/7), which slipped 8% from last week to a season low in fast nationals. The Shonda Rhimes DC-set drama was the top-rated show of the night behind TNF and it’s Pre-Game (2.7/10) telecast, which was down 13% itself from last week.
Starting off with another airing of It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (1.7/6), the rest of ABC’s night saw How To Get Away With Murder (1.8/6) fall 14% in the key demo to a series low in fast nationals. Though with TNF now over and CBS bringing Elementary back, next week could see a roller coaster ratings ride for WTGAWM.
There wasn’t a fall on the CW last night with both The Vampire Diaries (0.5/2) and The Originals (0.4/1) even with their October 23 shows.
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