• by Wayne Friedman , January 11, 2023

The NFL continued to buck overall TV trends, posting another regular-season viewership increase -- 2% higher to 16.6 million Nielsen-measured average viewers versus a year ago.

Three major, high-profile NFL Sunday packages scored average viewer increases for their games -- Fox, CBS and NBC.

Fox viewing rose 4% to average 19.4 million, when analyzing both its national and regional Sunday telecasts. For its late-afternoon national TV game, Fox was also 4% higher to 24.1 million.

All CBS’ regular-season NFL games -- national and regional games -- grew 2% to average 18.5 million, the highest total in seven years. For all higher-profile national Sunday afternoon telecasts, CBS was 8% higher to average 23.5 million.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” rose 3% to 18.3 million.

This doesn’t include viewership data of week two “MNF” games. Different games were shown simultaneously over a two hour period -- one airing on ABC (Minnesota-Philadelphia) and another on ESPN (Tennessee-Buffalo). Disney Networks average 20.6 million for both games which also included game airings on  (ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+)

The season total also excludes 23.8 million viewers for the last “MNF” game of the year -- the Buffalo Bills/Cincinnati Bengals game -- ESPN drawing 9.1 million viewers, and 11 million on ABC.

The game wasn’t completed due to Bills safety Damar Hamlin having a cardiac arrest on the field. He left the field in critical condition after a tackle. The game was stopped after around a half-hour of the broadcast.

Amazon averaged 9.6 million for its first season of “Thursday Night Football” where it aired 15 games. This was down 36% versus a year ago when it was 14.9 million Fox/NFL Network.

For its part, Amazon says “TNF” averaged 11.3 million viewers, when factoring in Amazon’s first-party measurement, which aggregates direct-viewing data from millions of devices and accounts, according to the company.

NFL Network aired four “Thursday Night Football” games averaging 7.97 million viewers.

National TV advertising spend on five networks -- Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN and ABC -- was $5.8 billion, according to iSpot.tv -- from 77,919 airings, pulling in 153.3 billion impressions.

It does not include data from Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.”

A year ago -- when including “TNF” on Fox/The NFL Network -- total spend was $6.1 billion, per iSpot.

This season, top-paying advertisers include Progressive, Geico, Verizon, Amazon Prime Video, AT&T Wireless, the NFL, State Farm, FanDuel, Pfizer, and T-Mobile.

This story has been updated.