‘Thursday Night Football’ Surges From Last Week & 2017; CW’s ‘Legacies’ OK In Debut – Update

UPDATED with additional broadcast ratings: The World Series was dark Thursday as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox relocated to the City of Angels for tonight’s Game 3, but Fox had a pretty good night anyway in baseball’s absence with a rising Thursday Night Football.

Taking the top spot in the demo and total viewers in primetime for a third consecutive night against competition that included the series premiere of the CW’s Vampire Diaries spinoff Legacies (0.3 rating in adults 18-49, 1.2 million viewers), Fox along with NFL Network scored a 9.2/16 in metered market results for the Houston Texans’ 42-23 victory over the Miami Dolphins. The number was fueled by the muscle being flexed by the Lone Star State team this season and some unbelievable catches again by wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins:

Every @DeAndreHopkins catch that counted from #MIAvsHOU.

Plus one that didn’t count but OH MY. 😱#Texans pic.twitter.com/tXP0O9320W

— NFL (@NFL) October 26, 2018

Although Hopkins’ amazing one-handed catch was ruled a penalty, Fox and the NFL caught some double-digit action in the early metrics. Last night’s game was up 39% from last week’s TNF season low, when the Denver Broncos ate the Arizona Cardinals’ lunch; the 45-10 blowout also faced serious sports competition from the NBA and MLB.

Year-over-year, the Texans’ victory Thursday pushed TNF up 10% over what the NFL and CBS drew in Week 8 in 2018, when the Baltimore Ravens shut out the Miami Dolphins in what was a season low at the time. That October 26, 2017 game ended up with a 3.4/14 rating among adults 18-49 and 11.4 million viewers, the latter also a season low. Last week’s game on Fox and NFL Network snared a 2.8/13 rating and an audience of 9.1 million.

Meanwhile, the premiere episode of the CW’s Legacies at 9 PM fell between the network’s other series debuts this year so far ratingswise — the new Charmed reboot drew a 0.5 and All American a 0.2 — and was even with the season average of last year’s final run of the TVD spinoff The Originals.

Overall, though, CBS’ comedies were king among original scripted fare Thursday, with The Big Bang Theory (2.2, 12.71M) at 8 PM up two-tenths as the most-watched and highest-rated entertainment program of the night, followed by Young Sheldon (1.7, 10.89M), Mom (1.2, 8.05M) and Murphy Brown (0.8, 6.09M). Sheldon was flat with a week ago, while Mom and Murphy Brown dipped a tenth. With SWAT (0.7, 5.34M) the most watched show at 10 PM, CBS finished second to Fox overall in both ratings metrics in Live+Same Day numbers, which will be adjusted with the NFL pre-emptions.

Other notables: ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (1.5, 6.51M) was back and gained a tenth, and NBC’s Law & Order: SVU (0.9, 4.16M) was the 10 PM hour’s highest-rated show.

As for the Dolphins-Texans game, it was pretty steady with Game 2 of the World Series the night before on Fox, with just a 7% dip in the metered markets. That Red Sox-winning game went on to have 13.46 million viewers with a 3.3/15 rating among 18-49s.