NBC Leads New Season, Fox Scores With World Series

NBC still leads after five weeks of the new broadcast TV season -- but with Fox closing the gap somewhat because of the World Series.

Like NBC, Fox is up a bit versus its five-week start in 2012: NBC is at an average 2.88 rating among 18-49 viewers in the Nielsen live-plus-same-day metric. A year ago, NBC was at 2.83. Fox is now averaging a 2.21 number in the same 18-49 viewer group, this versus a 2.19.

Both NBC and Fox have benefitted from big sports programming -- NBC with “Sunday Night Football” and Fox with Major League Baseball’s World Series.

CBS and ABC are the networks on the outside looking in -- at the moment. CBS is just ahead of ABC -- at a 2.02 to a 1.96 rating, respectively, among 18-49 viewers. A year ago, CBS was at 2.18, while ABC was at 2.10.

Overall, the four English-language broadcast network average is down 3% to a 2.27 average rating among 18-49 viewers. But among all viewers, networks are up a bit -- 2% to 8.28 million average -- mostly as a result of higher “Sunday Night Football” and World Series viewership.

CBS again leads in this category -- now at 9.73 million viewers versus 9.99 million the year before, followed by NBC at 9.0 million, up from 7.91 million; ABC at 7.18 million versus 7.85 million and Fox at 7.04 million versus 6.65 million.

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1 comment about "NBC Leads New Season, Fox Scores With World Series".
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  1. Rena Moretti from RM, October 29, 2013 at 9:37 p.m.

    This has to be the most misleading article I have ever read (and I've read doozies!!)

    Not only is NBC not "leading" anything, it is actually having a horrible development season.

    Was this written by NBC's PR Department?

    Seriously, 18-49 is meaningless, as I would have assumed you knew.

    Advertisers as a group do not overpay for any particular group (why would they?!!) Overall audience is the only meaningful measure.

    All you are doing with this kind of article is help NBC's executives hide the depth of the disaster they have wrought. They do not have a single hit and the only reason they don't look too awful is football coverage in Prime Time.

    Your readers, including me, deserve MUCH more honest and objective coverage.

    Enough with NBC's empty spin!

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