J
Joseph_Gallant
Guest
The ratings are in for yesterday's (January 22nd) AFC and NFC Champiobship games, won respectively by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks in one-sided blowouts.
The big news was that Fox's broadcast of the NFC game lost viewers through the evening (the game kicked-off at 6:35 P.M.), likely due to the fact it was ons-sided.
Many articles on the Internet, including this one from Medialife report that between 9 and 10 P.M. EST, the NFC game was nosed-out in the ratings by "Desperate Housewives"! As far as I know, this was the first time since one of the NFL's conference championship games has been played in prime-time that any part of the game broadcast was beaten in the ratings by any other network program.
Given that "Housewives" is supposed to appeal largely to women, it could even do damage to NBC's primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics on the three Sunday nights of the Games (February 12th, 19th, and 16th), assuming the show in fact airs first-run episodes those weeks.
On Sunday night the 19th, NBC will be carrying the short program in Ice Dancing during their prime-time Olympic coverage. Since it will be on tape, the network may now seriously wish to consider running it between 8:45 and a little after 10 P.M. ET/PT, so it would go head-to-head against "Housewives" and prevent large numbers of female viewers from switching to ABC. Ice Dancing, along with the other disciplines of Figure-Skating, attracts a large female TV viewership.
Except for the fact that ABC and ESPN are under the same ownership, and such a move could result in ESPN getting "weak" NFL games, I could even have seen ABC next year convincing the producers of "Housewives" to make a special three-part episode, with all three parts bring broadcast one after the other on Super Bowl Sunday had-to-head against the Big Game. Given that "Housewives" cut down the NFC Championship to size, and may well cut the Olympics down to size on two of the three Sundays of the Games, it might even cut the Super Bowl's ratings a bit.
The big news was that Fox's broadcast of the NFC game lost viewers through the evening (the game kicked-off at 6:35 P.M.), likely due to the fact it was ons-sided.
Many articles on the Internet, including this one from Medialife report that between 9 and 10 P.M. EST, the NFC game was nosed-out in the ratings by "Desperate Housewives"! As far as I know, this was the first time since one of the NFL's conference championship games has been played in prime-time that any part of the game broadcast was beaten in the ratings by any other network program.
Given that "Housewives" is supposed to appeal largely to women, it could even do damage to NBC's primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics on the three Sunday nights of the Games (February 12th, 19th, and 16th), assuming the show in fact airs first-run episodes those weeks.
On Sunday night the 19th, NBC will be carrying the short program in Ice Dancing during their prime-time Olympic coverage. Since it will be on tape, the network may now seriously wish to consider running it between 8:45 and a little after 10 P.M. ET/PT, so it would go head-to-head against "Housewives" and prevent large numbers of female viewers from switching to ABC. Ice Dancing, along with the other disciplines of Figure-Skating, attracts a large female TV viewership.
Except for the fact that ABC and ESPN are under the same ownership, and such a move could result in ESPN getting "weak" NFL games, I could even have seen ABC next year convincing the producers of "Housewives" to make a special three-part episode, with all three parts bring broadcast one after the other on Super Bowl Sunday had-to-head against the Big Game. Given that "Housewives" cut down the NFC Championship to size, and may well cut the Olympics down to size on two of the three Sundays of the Games, it might even cut the Super Bowl's ratings a bit.