'Sunday Night Football,' 'Fred' Deliver

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Over the weekend, on the eve of the new broadcast TV season, NBC's "Sunday Night Football" and a kid named Fred on Nickelodeon scored big TV results.

"Sunday Night Football" featured a game highlighting the brothers Manning -- Peyton and Eli of the Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants, respectively. It posted the fifth-best results ever for the NBC NFL series, a Nielsen preliminary 8.0 rating/21 share among 18-49 viewers.

The game was also 3% higher than the only other time the two brothers/ NFL stars met in a regular-season football game. The best "SNF" numbers ever came with the Sept. 9 game between the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints.

The Colts' 38-14 victory over the Giants came against virtually zero competition -- reruns and one original episode, that of ABC's season finale 10 p.m. drama "The Gates," which ended with a 0.9/2.

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During the 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. half hour, a combination of CBS' "60 Minutes" and a rerun of "Undercover Boss" posted a second-best 2.7/7. After that came a trio of Fox's "Family Guy" reruns between 8:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., with episodes earning a 2.4/6, 2.4/6 and a 2.5/6, respectively. During the 9 p.m to 9:30 p.m. half-hour, "Undercover Boss" also posted a 2.4/6.

NBC had a 6.7/18 overall on the night in the key 18-49 viewer group; CBS, was well behind that at 3.5/10; Fox, at 2.0/5; ABC, at 1.1/3; and Univision at 1.0/3.

On Saturday night, Internet video character Fred Figgelhorn, transformed to TV stardom, rocketed Nickelodeon's "Fred: The Movie" to a big-time 7.6 million total viewers -- easily making it cable TV's biggest movie of the season so far.

The kids' cable network scored large numbers among its core audience -- 3.3 million kids 6-11; 3.1 million Tweens 9-14; and 4.0 million kids 2-11. In addition, Nickelodeon says Fred videos generated 1.8 million streams on Nick.com.

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