CBS had true bragging rights on Sunday. Though its coverage of the Dallas’ win over Kansas City barely made its way into primetime, it was by far the biggest football game of the day — besting NBC’s Sunday Night Football (Oakland and Miami) by nearly 50 percent.
The NFL on CBS scored its highest rating of the 2017 season, with its full day coverage up 15 percent from 2016 and the marquee Dallas-KC game averaging a 14.2 overnight rating among households. Stack that against NBC’s primetime coverage, which barely improved (a 9.6 rating) after going against the World Series, and CBS’ coverage looks even more dominant.
Sunday Night Football was actually a reasonably tight game, the Raiders besting the Dolphins 27-24, but those two franchises clearly did not register much with viewers. Fortunately for NBC, the always reliable New England Patriots are set to play in primetime again next week.
The CBS coverage naturally lifted 60 Minutes. The show surged to 14.5 million viewers and a 2.4 rating among adults 18-49 in early returns. Wisdom of the Crowd, not looking too good for a full season considering the swirl of harassment allegations against star Jeremy Piven, took a 1.1 rating. NCIS: Los Angeles (0.9 adults) and Madam Secretary (0.7 adults) followed.
In other non-sports programming, Fox put out its comedy lineup — Bob’s Burgers (1.6 adults), The Simpsons (1.3 adults), Ghosted (1.0 adults), Family Guy (1.0 adults), The Last Man on Earth (0.8 adults). And, on ABC, Shark Tank and America’s Funniest Home Videos each averaged a 0.9 rating in the key demo.
