Dick Ebersol, head of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, says the first season of "Sunday Night Football" on the network "more than met corporate goals" by bringing in more male viewers and propping up
the entire Sunday night lineup. It also served as a platform to promote freshman drama hit "Heroes."
He calls the football offering the "cornerstone of the prime-time turnaround at
NBC" and says the successful launch of "Heroes" can be attributed, in large part, to the promotion it got.
Through the first 16 weeks of the regular season, "Sunday Night Football"
averaged a 9.4 rating among men 18-49, 262% higher than NBC garnered last year in the same time period. It also ranked third among all prime-time programming in adults 18-49 in fourth quarter, with an
8.9 rating.
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