NFL Ratings Up, 'Will & Grace' Ratings Down
by EG
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.
New England fans can always be trusted to tune in — and they did on Thursday, propelling CBS and the NFL Network up double digits over the prior season's comparable game.
Among metered market households, the telecast averaged a combined 11.1 overnight rating. That's a 26 percent jump from the week five game of Thursday Night Football in 2016 and a 12 percent lift from the previous week's telecast. It's another piece of very good news for the NFL, which has seen most primetime showdowns either steady or down from 2016 — though the season is performing in line with last year on the whole.
Also in CBS' corner on Thursday night was the fact that it was a tight game. The Patriots ended up defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by a slim 19-14 margin. Like the previous week's game, Thursday Night Football was also streamed on Amazon. Complete viewership across the three outlets will arrive later on Friday.
Like most new and returning series, Will & Grace's live draw diminished quite a bit in its second week. The NBC comedy, which tied ABC's Grey's Anatomy as the night's highest-rated non-sports telecast, lost a third of its premiere haul for a 2.0 rating among adults 18-49. It averaged just more than 7 million viewers, outshining the rest of the NBC lineup by both measures. The test of Will & Grace now will be to see if its time-shifting recoups a significant portion of that lost live audience.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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