TV Ratings: ‘The Simpsons’ Leads Sunday’s Scripted as Many Drop in Return

Even without the Emmys to contend with, Sunday Night Football dropped last night. The first official Sunday of the fall broadcast season, NBC still easily topped the rest of the Big Four in all measures.

The game, between the Chicago Bears and the Dallas Cowboys, pulled a 12.9 overnight rating among households. That put it down from the comparable game last season (and the game last week) by about 7 percent.

Football overrun helped on CBS, where nearly an hour of overage helped drive 60 Minutes to become the night’s top-performing non-sports program. It averaged a tentative 2.3 rating among adults 18-49 ahead of adjustments. A two-hour opener for NCIS: Los Angeles, moving to its new night, also saw lifts from where it typically performed on Mondays last season. The premiere pulled a 1.4 rating in the key demo and 9.4 million viewers.

Related Stories

TV

TV Ratings: Grammy Awards Hit Three-Year High for CBS

TV

'Ginny & Georgia' Soars to No. 1 on Streaming Chart

Overall, Sunday did not look as great as some of the previous nights during the first week of the season. Each of ABC’s dramas returned to a rather steep drop, and some of Fox’s comedies didn’t prove to be as robust in live-plus-same day showings as a year ago.

Last year’s DVR star Quantico had the steepest drop in its night-of showing. The show, which doubled its demo rating with live-plus-seven day ratings for the 2015-16 season, fell by nearly 50 percent to a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49. ABC neighbor Once Upon a Time also took a tumble, going down to a 1.2 rating in the key demo. The long-delayed return for Secrets and Lies, which outperformed everything else on ABC among total viewers with 4.1 million, also nabbed a 1.0 rating in the key demo.

Fox’s top honors went to The Simpsons, the only Sunday comedy up from 2015. It also led the pack with a 1.6 rating among adults 18-49. Family Guy (1.4 adults) held steady with last season’s premiere, while Last Man On Earth fell half of a point in the key demo for a 0.9 rating.

Son of Zorn averaged a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49 in its second showing. Zorn’s first episode, which aired after a substantial NFL lead-in before the start of the season, rose slightly to a 2.6 rating in the key demo in its first live-plus-three day ratings.