News

The kickoff of the NFL season was readily apparent in Nielsen’s September Gauge report, with broadcast TV seeing a slight viewership bump, and streaming services with exclusive NFL games also seeing big gains.

According to the Gauge, Amazon Prime Video posted the largest growth among all streaming services, growing by 12 percent thanks to Thursday Night Football and the Lord of the Rings series. Prime Video recorded 3.6 percent of all viewing in the month, while Peacock (which also had one exclusive NFL game) garnered 1.4 percent of viewing.

Notably, Disney+ also delivered its best performance ever, garnering 2.5 percent of viewing. Nielsen credits the growth for the integration of Hulu content into Disney+ (Hulu viewership declined accordingly) and a strong month for Bluey.

Overall streaming viewership continues to rise, growing 11 percent year over year, while cable declined slightly.

Nielsen’s Gauge figures for September 2024 are below.

Platforms

Streaming: 41 percent of all TV...

Streaming was up in September, led by strong success for Prime Video and Disney+, according to Nielsen’s latest edition of The Gauge.

Led by Thursday Night Football and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Prime Video was up 12% from August in its share of TV usage, which was the largest monthly growth among the streamers. Rings of Power was the third most-watched streaming title in September with 4.3B viewing minutes, thanks in part to the launch of Season 2.

Meanwhile, Disney+ hit a platform-best 2.5% share of TV usage for September, growing 5.2% month-over-month. Nielsen says this is due in part to making Hulu content available on the platform for package subscribers, as well as its consistent boost from Bluey, which notched 4.2B minutes viewed this month — good enough for fourth overall streaming title in September.

Peacock also saw got a boost thanks to the NFL with its coverage of...

Josh Richards has entered into a first-look deal with Amazon, Variety has learned exclusively.

Under the terms of the deal, he will act as a brand ambassador for the streamer and will develop custom social media for its content, including the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.” The pro football league signed an 11-year deal with Amazon in 2021 for the rights to the Thursday night games, with this fall’s season being the first under the deal.

“We are extremely excited to welcome Josh and his incredible team into the Amazon Studios and Prime Video fold,” said Lee Stimmel, head of influencer marketing for Amazon’s Prime Video. “Josh has an amazing track record of creating engaging content that resonates with his millions of fans. We cannot wait to get started building social content formats with Josh that will excite our customers all over the world.”

The deal will also see...

Amazon has joined the bidding for the 22 regional sports networks currently owned by 21st Century Fox that regulators are requiring Disney to sell off as part of its pending Fox acquisition, CNBC has reported.

The digital giant, which already has a foothold in sports via NFL Thursday Night Football rights as well as soccer and tennis, is among a cluster of media companies and private equity firms in the running. Citing unidentified sources, CNBC said first-round bidders for the full portfolio include P.E. firms Apollo Global Management, Kkr and Blackstone Group as well as local TV station groups Sinclair and Tegna.

The value of the Rsn portfolio has been estimated at $20 billion, but no dollar figures have been reported in connection with the bids. CNBC said Fox has not submitted a bid in the first round, but could enter the second-round bidding, which will get under way after Thanksgiving and...

Hannah Storm knows football fans have to take an extra step to listen to her and Andrea Kremer broadcast “Thursday Night Football.” “It is your choice,” she told viewers during last week’s game between the Denver Broncos and the Arizona Cardinals.

You won’t find the duo holding forth on Fox, which owns TV rights to the NFL’s Thursday-night showcase. To get to them, a sports aficionado must subscribe to Amazon Prime, then opt not only to stream each week’s contest, but also toggle the audio selection to “Storm-Kremer” rather than sticking with the default Fox feed.

The results can be astonishing. Where are the deep male tones of a team like Fox’s Joe Buck and Troy Aikman or NBC’s Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth? Never before in the history of NFL broadcasting has an all-female team called TV games. On other media outlets, female...

David Boreanaz is once again proving his primetime power. Fresh off a 12-season run on the Fox staple “Bones,” Boreanaz didn’t miss a beat: His new CBS drama, “Seal Team,” has already been given a full 22-episode first season order, and is shoo-in for a sophomore renewal.

Not many performers can brag about starring in back-to-back-to-back hits, which makes Boreanaz a TV heavy hitter on par with stars like Ted Danson and William Shatner — the rare actors who have enjoyed multiple hits on unrelated shows. Boreanaz, of course, top-lined the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” spinoff “Angel” for several years (and 110 episodes) before moving on to 246 episodes of “Bones.”

“Seal Team” stars Boreanaz as Jason Hayes, the leader of the Tier One team, a group deployed on clandestine missions worldwide at a moment’s notice. The show has been consistently making the top 25 ratings among both adults 18-49 and total viewers.

Good grief! Christmas specials are in full swing, and the networks dusted off some of their biggest classics last week: ABC’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and CBS’ “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In their inaugural 2017 runs, “Rudolph” (2.1 among adults 18-49) edged out “Charlie Brown” (1.8), giving a ratings edge to the reindeer with a very shiny nose.

“Rudolph,” which premiered in 1964, and “Charlie Brown,” which first bowed in 1965, are considered the key staples in a sea of primetime holiday specials, some of which have come and gone over the years. But both specials were overshadowed this year by a newcomer: “DreamWorks Trolls Holiday,” which averaged a 2.4 rating when it aired on Nov. 24, during the Thanksgiving weekend.

But there are plenty of caveats to all of this, since none of the specials actually faced off in the same time slot. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” performed respectably considering it aired in a tough Thursday 8 p.

The critics didn’t care much for “The Orville,” but apparently viewers do. Seven weeks into the new season, Seth MacFarlane’s space odyssey is one of the most time-shifted series in all of television, as its audience more than doubles after seven days of DVR and video-on-demand usage.

So far this season, “The Orville” leads all freshman series when it comes to viewership lift percentage. In Live+7 ratings, “The Orville’s” season-long average jumps 110 percent among adults 18-49 — from a 1.0 rating to a 2.1 rating. The only broadcast shows that do better are both returning series: “How To Get Away With Murder” (+133 percent) and “Designated Survivor” (+122 percent).

“The Orville” adds another 1.1 rating points to its overall average when time-shifted viewing is included. Among new series, that puts it behind the fall’s two breakout hits: “The Good Doctor” (+2.1 ratings points) and “Young Sheldon” (+1.3 ratings points), as well as tied with another new Fox series,...

It turns out there’s enough to go around ratings-wise on Thursday night. NBC has taken hold of the Thursday Night Football package, which it shares with CBS (both of whom simulcast with NFL Network), and its fortunes on the night have grown substantially. Now with two nights of NFL, plus staples like “This Is Us” and “The Voice,” NBC easily won the week ending November 12 in adults 18-49, and scored its first total viewers victory of the season.

But on Thursday nights, ABC and CBS also have reason to crow in the 8 p.m. hour: “Grey’s Anatomy,” which just hit its 300th episode, remains a potent force. And “Young Sheldon” is developing into a new hit behind “The Big Bang Theory.” (Also in the hour, Fox’s “Gotham” and The CW’s “Supernatural” also perform relatively respectably, although not nearly at the same level).

Later on Thursday, ABC...

On the night when the NFL Thursday Night Football package shifted over to NBC, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (1.9 demo rating, 8.1 million viewers) celebrated its 300th episode with its biggest overall crowd in nine months, and a 6% week-to-week build-up in the demo. But CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (2.7, 13.58M) and Young Sheldon (2.2, 12.3M) were the night’s most watched shows, and highest rated demo-wise. Those two comedies’ stats could shift when final data arrives, with Bb…...

The World Series ended in heartbreak for the Los Angeles Dodgers — as the Houston Astros secured their first championship in club history — but it was a tremendous success for Fox. And for at least one week, baseball was once again America’s favorite pastime, dominating over the NFL.

According to Fox, the network averaged 18.9 viewers across all seven games, the second-best audience for a World Series since 2009. The series was down 19 percent from last year’s historic Chicago Cubs win, which also went to seven games (23.4 million), but it topped 2015 by 29 percent (14.7 million) and 2014 by 37 percent (13.8 million).

For the week ending Oct. 29, World Series Game 5 was the most-watched program, at 19.1 million viewers, and second only to “The Walking Dead” in adults 18-49. Among viewers, all five of the week’s World Series games (the final two will be reflected in next week’s ranker), beat the top NFL game of the week.

Snapshot with fast nationals: New series premiere: CBS' S.W.A.T. (1.3 in 18-49, 7.5 million); New series time slot premiere: CBS’ Young Sheldon (2.4, 14.1 million); Returning series premiere: CBS' Mom (1.8, 9.6 million), Life in Pieces (1.4, 7.7 million). CBS debuted its post-Thursday Night Football lineup last night, but the initial ratings results are inconclusive as the network’s lineup was pre-empted in the country’s top market, New York City, as well as in Buffalo…...

“The Walking Dead” remains far, far away from the ratings graveyard. The show’s Season 8 opener, which also doubled as its landmark 100th episode, was the week’s top-rated program among adults 18-49, even leapfrogging over NFL football.

But without the benefit of a major cliffhanger like last season, AMC’s “Dead” plunged from last year’s opener (when [it’s been a year, but spoiler alert nonetheless] Glenn and Abraham were brutally murdered on screen). With three days of DVR and video-on-demand usage included, “The Walking Dead” posted a 6.8 rating in live+3 ratings among adults 18-49 this past Sunday (down from 10.8 last year) and attracted 15 million viewers (down from 20.8 million viewers).

In live viewership, “The Walking Dead” dipped to its lowest-rated premiere since Season 3. The show’s erosion allowed a very different kind of drama to surpass it in total viewers: ABC’s surging “The Good Doctor,” which jumped 52 percent in viewers (from 10.6 million to 16.1 million) after three days of time-shifted playback,...

CBS topped last night’s primetime with another “Thursday Night Football” game, but ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” gave the pigskin a run for its (gambling) money at 8 p.m. as another key character said goodbye to the hospital.

Currently, ABC and CBS are tied for the hour in the key 18-49 demographic, with the Disney-owned broadcaster up by all of 1,000 total viewers across the 60-minute block’s average. That said, due to the nature of live sports, CBS’ Nielsen numbers are subject to significant adjustment.

Click here to see who clocked out from Seattle Grace by 9 p.m.

The Nielsen “Doctor” is in. After three weeks of the new season, the ABC drama “The Good Doctor” appears to be a bonafide hit for the network.

According to the latest Nielsen data covering three days’ worth of time-shifting (including DVR and video on demand viewing), “The Good Doctor” is averaging 16.42 million viewers — making it not just TV’s most-watched new drama, but TV’s most-watched drama, period. That’s because after three weeks, “The Good Doctor” is just a smidge above CBS’ perennial powerhouse “NCIS” (16.35 million) and NBC’s emotional juggernaut “This Is Us” (16.19 million).

The show, starring Freddie Highmore as a high-functioning autistic physician, is also the fall’s No. 1 freshman drama and top-rated 10 p.m. series among Adults 18-49 (3.7 rating).

Read More:‘The Good Doctor’ Is Destroying One Misconception About Autism at a Time

David Shore executive produces “The Good Doctor,” which is based on a South Korean format,...

“Game of Thrones” has remained a powerful force in on-demand viewership, weeks and months after Season 7 ended. But streaks are meant to be broken: According to the most recent weekly report from Xfinity, NBC’s “This Is Us” has taken over as the new most-viewed on-demand series on the service.

Viewers can’t get enough of “Thrones,” which had been the No. 1 show on Xfinity On Demand every week since May 22 — essentially, since the end of the regular TV season. But now that fall TV is officially underway, it’s probably no surprise that audiences are now looking to catch up with the Pearsons of “This Is Us.”

Users are also sampling new series on demand including ABC’s “The Good Doctor,” HBO’s “The Deuce,” Fox’s “The Orville,” and ABC’s “Marvel’s Inhumans.”

Read More:‘Will & Grace,’ ‘Young Sheldon’ Predicted To Be TV’s Biggest New Hits,...

There’s a bit of a similarity in the lead characters on CBS’ “Young Sheldon” and ABC’s “The Good Doctor”: They’re both highly intelligent but socially uncomfortable, and apparently on the spectrum. But here’s one more thing they have in common: Their shows are two of this fall’s earliest new hits.

“Young Sheldon” and “The Good Doctor” are the first new fall 2017 series to score full-season pickups, in light of their solid debut ratings. According to the just-released Live+3 ratings (which includes three days of DVR and VOD usage) for premiere week, “Young Sheldon” was the week’s top-rated new comedy, and “The Good Doctor” was the top-rated new drama.

As a matter of fact, “Young Sheldon” (21.5 million) and “The Good Doctor” (16.9 million) were bigger than Sunday Night Football. Here’s what else is incredible: Both shows premiered on the same Monday night, Sept. 25 — the...

2017-10-06T12:59:46-07:00Nfl Ratings Up, 'Will & Grace' Ratings Down

There's more evidence that if Donald Trump promises something is going to happen, you can bet the opposite is going to happen. After Trump urged fans to stop watching NFL games to protest player protests, ratings for NFL broadcasts have remained steady or have gone up. For this week's edition of NFL Thursday Night Football, ratings went up in a big way, increasing by more than ten percent from last week and more than 25 percent from the same week a year ago.

News was not so good for the revival of Will & Grace, which enjoyed strong ratings for its first episode last week. This week, ratings for the series' second episode fell by a third into a tie with Grey's Anatomy on CBS.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

New England fans can always be trusted to tune...

In TV’s own star wars, both Fox’s “The Orville” and CBS’ “Star Trek: Discovery” launched into similar orbits.

The two shows opened solid, a few weeks apart, on their respective live, linear broadcast networks. But in live+3 ratings (which includes three days of DVR and video on-demand usage), both premieres scored an identical total viewer average: 10.6 million each.

Fox’s “The Orville” was at least a light year ahead in the adults 18-49 demo, however, opening to a strong 3.5 rating — compared to the decent, but less stellar, 2.1 rating for “Star Trek: Discovery.”

Both shows premiered on a Sunday, but it’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison: “Orville” benefited from a direct NFL lead-in (on Sept. 10), while “Discovery” premiered behind “60 Minutes” (on Sept. 24). Also, “Discovery” has been promoted as a CBS All Access property, and the Eye’s digital platform generated record sign-ups in time for the launch of...

2017-09-29T12:53:00-07:00Thursday Night Football Ratings Are Up...And Down

Donald Trump ignited a national controversy last week when he said that NFL players who failed to stand for the national anthem should be fired. Trump's comments inspired lots of Americans to speak out against professional football players and lots of NFL teams and owners to speak up in defense of their players. Trump responded by encouraging a boycott of NFL games, both in person and on TV. Since then, all eyes have been on NFL ratings, which had been in decline even before the controversy.

The ratings data has been mixed so far. Ratings for last week's edition of Monday Night Football were the highest of the season far. NFL Thursday Night Football was a different story, turning in ratings that were lower than last year's first Thursday but higher than comparable games last season.

2017-09-28T16:33:51-07:00Thursday Night Football Is on Amazon and You Can Watch It!

Are you ready to watch some football? This year, you can watch NFL Thursday Night Football on Amazon. Read on to find out how. And don't forget to check out our NFL schedule guide to stay on top of which game you want to watch next.

Via CNBC.

Amazon's first NFL live-stream will take place Thursday night at 8:25 Pm Et/5:25 Pm Pt. The Green Bay Packers are hosting the Chicago Bears in an Nfc North match-up.

The game is the first of the 10 NFL matches Amazon will be streaming this year as part of a $50 million deal.

But Amazon's NFL stream isn't available to everyone — you must be an Amazon Prime member to watch it.

Amazon Prime is a paid membership program that gives access to free two-day shipping, a...

September is officially here, which means one thing: The fall television season is upon us!

With dozens of shows about to hit the small screen in the next several months (from proven blockbusters This Is Us and Grey’s Anatomy to newbies The Gifted and Star Trek: Discovery), we don’t blame you if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of TV headed your way.

Related: The Complete List of Which Shows Are Canceled or Renewed

To help you keep everything straight, Et has compiled a comprehensive guide to the most important premiere dates for your favorite returning shows and the latest new offerings on broadcast, cable and streaming for the rest of the year.

We’ll be updating this list regularly, so check back for the latest premiere dates.

Related: 2017 TV Preview: 'Game of Thrones,' 'Riverdale,' 'Outlander' and More!

September

Tuesday, Sept. 5

10 p.m. – [link...

No “Bull,” CBS wants you to know that the freshman Michael Weatherly series is actually the No. 1 new show of the year in total viewers, over NBC’s lauded “This Is Us.”

“We congratulate them on their success, but we like winning,” CBS senior exec VP Kelly Kahl said. He also pointed out that even CBS’ “Blue Bloods” has a larger audience than any other drama on the other networks, except “This Is Us.”

“The Big Bang Theory” is the “Wayne Gretzky of comedy,” he noted, arguing that no other half-hour comes close in total viewers, which is why they’re big on spinoff entry “Young Sheldon.” The show was recently renewed for two more seasons, a negotiation that Moonves characterized as amicable.

He also said he “hoped” that the show will continue even beyond that. “We’ll do these two years and we’re not going to just lay down,...

2017-04-05T04:40:57-07:00Nfl Games Coming to Amazon Prime

Amazon is getting into the sports arena.

The e-commerce giant has reached a deal with the NFL to stream 10 NFL Thursday Night Football games, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The games will only be available to Amazon Prime members, who pay $99 a year for free two-day shipping and access to the service's library of streaming music, movies and television shows.

The one-year agreement is valued at around $50 million, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Recode, which both broke the news. That number dwarfs Twitter's reported $10 million deal last year to stream multiple games. The Thursday night package, which is currently split between CBS and NBC with five games each, will continue to air on linear television.

Recode reports that Amazon will run most of the ads that appear on the CBS and NBC broadcasts,...

Veteran hits like “The Walking Dead” and “Empire” may be experiencing ratings declines, but make no mistake: Negan and Cookie are still monsters.

All 16 of “The Walking Dead” episodes that aired in 2016 made it on to the list of the most-watched telecasts of 2016 among adults 18-49 (the demographic still preferred by advertisers). No other TV show can boast that stat. “The Big Bang Theory” landed 14 episodes on the list, while “Empire” had 10 and “Game of Thrones” had three.

Sports telecasts dominated the list – no surprise, given some of this year’s thrilling championship series. As always, the Super Bowl was by far the most-watched program of the year in all of TV, as Denver’s win over Carolina – quarterback Peyton Manning’s finale – averaged 112,576,000 total viewers.

Read More: Most-Watched Television Networks: Ranking 2016’s Winners and Losers

But right behind it, the history-making Game 7 of this year’s World Series, featuring...

Ho Ho Ho! Toss me that football, yo!

With a night mostly filled with specials, comedy, and hour-long dramas that the traditional viewing public has never tuned into, football was all anybody cared about.

And that, still, wasn't anything to crow about.

NBC managed to lose an entire ratings point from the previous week for NFL Thursday Night Football and still win the week with a hefty 3.7 for the evening and about 12 million viewers throughout.

ABC took a chance on repeats of Toy Story that Time Forgot, which remained forgotten with a 0.8 and Shrek the Halls, which did a tick better with 0.9.

View Slideshow: ABC Cheat Sheet: What Will Be Canceled?

At 9, the Great American Baking Show, featuring some really ugly flat, misshapen fruity bread drew 0.9.

At 10 Notorious hauled in 0.5, down 0.4 from last week for it's finale, even though a lead had been kidnapped.

CBS lead the night with a...

WWE.com

With the recent crisis in WWE surrounding WWE Raw’s plummeting television ratings, it should come as no surprise that the company’s “B” show, SmackDown, is also experiencing a decrease in viewers.

This week’s October 15 edition of the show drew 2.09 million viewers. This was a slight drop versus what the show drew last week, 2.15 million viewers. SmackDown finished Thursday evening as the fifth most watched show on cable television, trailing the Mlb playoff game between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, the NFL Thursday Night Football game between the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints, Project Runway, and a Thursday night college football game on Espn.

SmackDown has been a floundering show for many months now. WWE puts no real emphasis on the program’s importance in promoting any major storyline developments or major matches. SmackDown is firmly positioned in lame duck status right...

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” bested “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in the ratings for the first time on Thursday night, in addition to almost tying “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Kimmel scored a 0.9 rating/5 share in the advertiser coveted adults 18-49 demographic, while Colbert got a 0.7/5. Fallon’s show got a 1.0/5. Colbert’s “Late Show” was delayed due to CBS’s NFL Thursday night football overrun so aired later than its regular 11:30 p.m. timeslot. While Kimmel enjoyed a strong boost thanks his lead-in — ABC’s return of Shondaland’s #Tgit lineup which includes “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away.

The regular-season debut of Thursday Night Football on CBS and NFL Network has the Denver Broncos visiting the Kansas City Chiefs in a Week 2 Afc West matchup on Sept. 17 at 8:25pm Et. Full Thursday Night Football and CBS/NFL Network schedule below: Download a Free printable 2015 NFL TV Schedule Here! NFL Thursday Night Football 2015 TV schedule on CBS and NFL Network All Times Eastern. Not All Games Are Televised In All Areas. Check Local Listings For Games Available In Your Area. Local Blackout Restrictions Apply. Schedule Subject To Change. Week 2 Thursday, Sept. 17 Denver at Kansas City, 8:25pm … Continue reading →

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