• by Wayne Friedman , December 7, 2009

NBC, with a couple of weeks remaining in the NFL season, continued its winning ways, scoring another big rating result for its "Sunday Night Football."

The game, featuring two strong competitors -- the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals -- grabbed a 6.8 rating/17 share among 18-49 viewers and 18.3 million overall viewers, per preliminary Nielsen results. These numbers are comparable to its season averages, which are higher than a year ago.

Although there were some scattered repeats from network programmers for the night, for the most part all networks came to play. ABC's "Desperate Housewives," the usual big Sunday night leader (outside of football season), managed a 4.8/11 -- up about 10% versus its 4.7 season rating average.

Fox got a big early-evening draft from its big New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys game, which added in a large 7.8/22 among 18-49 viewers to the 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. time period.

Although Fox was in repeats from 8:30 to 10 p.m., its NFL programming -- "The OT" at a 4.5/12 and a good "BCS Selection Show" at a healthy 3.4/9 -- landed Fox in second place for the night, with a 3.9/10 among 18-49 viewers. (Fox also placed second among 18-34 viewers with a 3.8/10).

Two other strong Sunday night performers included CBS' "Amazing Race" finale, improving almost 20% to a 3.7/9 over recent finales. ABC's "Brothers & Sister" scored its best seasonal results so far, with a 3.7/9 -- and its best numbers overall since March of this year.

NBC had a 5.6/14 average among 18-49ers, followed by Fox at a 3.9/10; ABC at a 3.4/8; CBS at a 2.4/6; and Univision with a 0.9/2.