NFL Overrun Leads Fox to Run Over Rivals

Rash Report: Vikings-Packers, Yankees-Phillies Scores

by John Rash
Published: November 02, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS (AdAge.com) -- NFL football loomed over Sunday's ratings results. Even when there wasn't a game on.

First Fox had the NFL overrun of Minnesota Viking Brett Favre's homecoming game in Green Bay against his former team, the Packers. Final live-plus-same-day data released Tuesday will reveal ratings for the exact prime-time overrun, but for now the most accurate ratings reflection is for 7-7:30 p.m., which scored an 11.2/30 rating and share in the ad-centric adult 18-49 demographic. Post-game wrap-up show "The O.T." followed, with 7:30-8 p.m. notching a 6.5/17.

Fox's football not only sacked CBS's "60 Minutes" (2.1/6) and ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos" (2.0/5), but NBC's rival NFL wrap-up, "Football Night in America" (.8/2), as most football fans stuck with the real thing rather than an analysis of the day's games.

Then, for the only Sunday night during the regular season, NBC's "Sunday Night Football" didn't run, in order to make way for Fox's coverage of World Series Game 4 (6.9/17 from 8-11 p.m, which will probably rise, given the ninth inning Yankee win), which gave context to just how much NBC is going to miss football.

NBC is really going to miss its Sunday night games, at least based on the 1.7/4 for 2005 theatrical "National Treasure," which was only about 23% of the regular rating for "Sunday Night Football." And once the final whistle of the regular season sounds, the gridless-grid will feature a two hour version of "Celebrity Apprentice." But at least among its "celebrities" are three athletes -- former baseball player Darryl Strawberry, former Olympian Michael Johnson and former wrestler Bill Goldberg -- whose most recent prime-time prominence is more evocative of ESPN Classic than NFL on NBC.