• by Wayne Friedman , January 2, 2008

This time of year, TV is all about football and repeats.

With that formula in play, the last Sunday of 2007 gave NBC a victory, thanks to its "Sunday Night Football" game--Tennessee Titans vs. the Indianapolis Colts. The network pulled in a Nielsen preliminary 4.2 rating/11 share among 18-49 viewers for the night. The game garnered a respectable 5.2/13--which isn't bad, considering that Colts star quarterback Peyton Manning sat out the game.

Both Fox and CBS also benefited from football--albeit football overruns from the afternoon's games. Fox grabbed a 5.3/16 from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. CBS got a 3.8/11 for its early evening football game from 7-7:30 p.m., and a combined football/"60 Minutes" rating of 2.7/8.

Fox had a 3.4/9 for a second-place spot on the night. After its football numbers, Fox's best came from a "Simpsons" repeat--a 3.2/9-- and an NFL post-game show, "The OT," also with a 3.2/9.

CBS was next with a 2.5/7 on the night. After its big football numbers, CBS scored a 2.9/8 for "60 Minutes" and a 2.7/7 for "Amazing Race."

ABC managed to stay over the 2 rating mark with a 2.0/5. That came entirely from a four-hour telecast of the classic film "The Sound of Music."

CW wandered in with a 0.3/1. Those were the exact numbers for each of its shows: "CW Now," a repeat of "Aliens in America," a repeat of "Life is Wild" and a repeat of Crowned: The Mother of all Beauty Pageants." "Crowned" pulled in the best in terms of overall viewers: 894,000.