Cable
   
Homepage



'MNF' scores
big victory for ESPN


Sports network vaults to first in primetime in October

Oct 28, 2009

ESPN owes the NFL a thank-you note.

Driven by record ratings for "Monday Night Football," the network thoroughly dominated the competition in October, finishing first across all the adult demographics and total viewers, as well as boasting the month's top four shows.

That's according to basic cable ratings for October released yesterday by Nielsen.

"MNF" games were the top four finishers among viewers, adults 18-49, 18-34 and 25-54, led by the Minnesota Vikings-Green Bay Packers game that set an all-time cable record with 21.9 million total viewers.

ESPN finished first in primetime easily, rising more than 20 percent across all the major demos. Among total viewers, it averaged 3.73 million, a 500,000 advantage over second-place TBS, which had baseball coverage.

In 18-49s, ESPN averaged 1.88 million, 300,000 ahead of TBS, and in 18-34s the sports network averaged 855,000, 70,000 more than TBS.

Among 25-54s, ESPN averaged nearly 1.9 million, nearly 400,000 better than TBS.

TBS had the remaining six top-10 shows among total viewers, all of them postseason baseball games, but the network was down compared to last October across virtually every demographic thanks to a snoozer National League Championship Series. Last year's seven-game ALCS brought in better ratings.

Among the cable news networks, Fox News Channel continued to rank first among 25-54s, the key news demographic, despite all four networks seeing declines versus last year, during the run-up to the presidential election.

CNN was off the most, 653 percent, plunging to third place, just slightly above HLN, averaging 187,000 viewers. By comparison, Fox News averaged 563,000. Last year only 46,000 viewers separated the two networks.

FX was the only top-10 network besides ESPN to see double-digit growth in primetime among 18-49s, up 10 percent over last year.



Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.




Latest headlines
CBS takes its first Thursday, a slow one
Preparing for life after 'Oprah' wraps up
'Happily Ever Faster,' don't bet on it
In Union Square, dunk Joey the Clown
Do you understand web measurement?
Agencies to Nielsen: Reinstate live stream
Rachel, help, we're being left in the dark
Best tube bets this weekend

BBC America president Garth Ancier steps down
Nicke Bergstrom becomes creative director at Mother New York
Nathan Hackstock becomes West Coast CD at Sapient Interactive
Frank Hahn and Naoki Ito become ECDs at W+K Tokyo

Catherine Balsam-Schwaber becomes SVP of marketing at iVillage
Chris De Luca becomes sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times
Jennifer Howard rises to senior reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education
James Van Der Beek files for divorce after six years



© 2009 Media Life Privacy Statement