• by Wayne Friedman , November 12, 2014

Among 18-49 viewers, NBC has maintained its top position -- now at an average 2.9 rating for the first seven days, looking at Nielsen’s live plus seven days of time-shifted viewing (L7) -- with the same numbers as its season-to-date numbers through six weeks.

CBS slipped one-tenth to a 2.7 rating; ABC improved one-tenth to a 2.5. Fox and CW stayed the same, with a 2.3 and a 0.8 rating, respectively.

Strong NFL programming has benefited NBC and CBS prime-time lineups so far.

CBS still maintains its large lead overall when looking at all prime-time viewers -- at 12.3 million through seven weeks. NBC is second with 9.6 million, followed by ABC at 9 million, Fox at 6.9 million, and CW at 2 million.

For the week ending November 9 -- coming from Nielsen’s live-plus-same day time-shifting metric -- all networks took a dip versus their seasonal averages: CBS was at 9.3 million viewers, followed by ABC at 8.4 million; NBC at 7.8 million; Fox at 4.5 million viewers; and CW at 1.5 million.

Looking at cable networks, ESPN comes out on top -- with 3.05 million viewers in prime time for the most recent week. Fox News was next at 2.5 million, followed by AMC at 1.80 million; Disney Channel at 1.76 million; USA Network at 1.70 million; Hallmark Channel at 1.67 million; TBS at 1.59 million; Discovery Channel at 1.35 million; History at 1.35 million; and NFL Network at 1.26 million.