Thursday 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. So, no matter which way you want to see the ratings going, you can pretend to see a trend in Thursday's game. But if you want to see the real numbers, read on.

Via NBCSports.

With everyone paying attention to how the national anthem issue is affecting the NFL’s ratings, Thursday night’s Bears-Packers ratings will be closely monitored. Unfortunately for both sides, the numbers will not be easy to spin.

CBS and NFL Network combined for a 9.9 overnight rating. That makes the game the most-watched TV program in America last night, and it’s an increase over the 8.6 rating that CBS and NFL Network got from last year’s Bears-Packers Thursday night game, which was in Week Seven. It’s also a big increase over the 4.8 rating that last year’s Thursday night Week Four game received, although that game was only on NFL Network, not on CBS.

However, it’s also a decrease from the 10.6 overnight rating that last year’s first Thursday Night Football CBS game got. So compared to the first game of the shared CBS-NFL Network schedule last year, Bears-Packers was down.

Check out the whole story at NBCSports.

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