Primetime Ratings: NBC Wins Big With Pre-Season Football

NBC won the ratings race Thursday, putting up a hearty 1.8 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and a 9 share. That beat the 1.0/5 that CBS and Fox mustered.

Pre-season football paced NBC, as the Bears-Ravens Hall of Fame game took up all of its prime. Last year’s pre-season opener scored a 2.3.

CBS had comedy repeats leading into Big Brother, which was down 7% at 1.4, then a SWAT rerun.

On Fox, The Four: Battle For Stardom grew 25% to 1.0 from 8 to 10 p.m.

On ABC, it was The Gong Show at a flat 0.5, then a Match Game repeat, and Take Two at a level 0.4.

Telemundo did a 0.5/3 and Univision a 0.4/2.

The CW rated a 0.1/1 with repeats.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.