It’s official, last night’s ESPN Monday Night Football game where the Dallas Cowboys bested the Philadelphia Eagles 41-37 set ratings records both for Monday Night Football since it’s aired on ESPN, and set a new record for largest cable network viewing audience. In both cases the previous records were with last year’s matchup between the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens The game drew 18.608 million viewers. Here’s the full press release with additional data from ESPN:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 16, 2008
Monday Night Football — Cable’s Biggest Audience Ever
ESPN Wins Prime Time among All Networks for Second Straight Week
ESPN.com NFL Content Yields 8.6 Million Visits & 86 Million Page Views
Last night, ESPN’s Monday Night Football – the Dallas Cowboys’ 41-37 home victory over the Philadelphia Eagles – delivered the biggest audience in the history of cable television. The game earned a 13.3 rating, representing 12,953,000 homes (18,608,000 P2+), edging the previous record, ESPN’s New England – Baltimore Monday Night Football telecast of December 3, 2007 (12,529,000 homes, based on a 13.0 rating, 17,522,000 P2+). In addition, for the second straight Monday, ESPN won the night among all networks, broadcast or cable, and the game drove significant traffic to ESPN.com’s NFL content.
Last night’s telecast is the most-watched prime-time NFL game of the 2008 season to date. It also is ESPN’s third-highest rating of all time, trailing only two other NFL games: Chicago at Minnesota on December 6, 1987 (14.4 rating; 8,400,000 homes), and Detroit at Miami on Christmas 1994 (14.2 rating; 8,927,000).
Cable’s third-biggest audience ever is also an ESPN Monday Night Football telecast from Dallas – the New York Giants at the Cowboys on October 23, 2006, with an average of 11,807,000 homes (12.8 rating, 16.028 P2+).
For 2008, the three Monday Night Football telecasts represent cable’s three biggest audiences of the year. The other two came in last week’s special 2008 season-opening doubleheader of Monday Night Football:
- Minnesota at Green Bay earned a 9.3 rating, representing an average of 9,051,000 households (12,501,000 viewers – P2+)
- Denver at Oakland received a 7.3 rating with an average of 7,153,000 households watching (9,665,000 viewers).
Those two games powered ESPN to an increase in ratings vs. the first NFL weekend of 2007, the only NFL partner network to post a ratings increase with its opening week games.
The telecast’s statistics represent increases of 46% in rating, 48% in household impressions and 60% among P2+, respectively, vs. the same week last year (Philadelphia – Washington: 9.1; 8,735,000 and 11,633,000).
For the NFL season to date, ESPN’s Monday Night Football is averaging a 10.1 rating and 9,846,000 households (13,786,000 P2+), up 23%, 25% and 32%, respectively from last season through three games.
ESPN’s presentation of the “game around the game,” which included NFL studio programming starting at 3:30 p.m. through the conclusion of NFL Primetime at 2:30 a.m. ET, delivered 25.6 gross household coverage ratings for its MNF coverage.
ESPN.com
Also, NFL content on ESPN.com, including “Monday Night Surround,” accessed via computers and mobile devices generated more than 8.6 million visits and more nearly 86 million page views from Monday through Tuesday at noon. In addition, during the same period there were more than 2.6 million views of pro football-related video on ESPN.com and SportsCenter Right Now was viewed more than 2.4 million times. Also, in the past week (Tuesday through Monday) ESPN football-related podcasts were downloaded more than 614,000 times.
NEXT WEEK ON MNF
Next week, ESPN’s MNF schedule will continue with the New York Jets and Brett Favre visiting the San Diego Chargers at 8:30 p.m. The complete Monday NFL schedule on ESPN:
The mouse should be happy.
indeed.
High School Musical 2 did well last year didnt it.
The highest cable audience in the UK is 2million! i think it was for Bionic Woman or something!
High School Musical Two did 17.2 million in its initial airing. Though if you add up all the subsequent airings, it’s truly massive. But it looks like ESPN set the record for most viewers of a single airing whether it be on an advertising supported network or not…
Strange that only Walt Disney channels are breaking records in cable.
The Baltimore Colts played last year? Someone has been living in a cave the last 2 decades or so.
Haha, good catch Brian. I’m well aware of the Ravens, and had not forgotten them (and even got it right in the preliminary ratings post). I’d chalk it up to being old and brain dead (long day) rather than cave dwelling…
I read that RAW only got a 2.6 rating OUCH Monday Night Football really took a bite out of the RAW audience and I am a wrestling fan but even I was watching more of the Cowboys vs Eagles game I saved RAW for my DVR so I am not sure what RAW can do to go against NFL probably nothing but hope there are some bad match-ups which looking at next monday’s game between the very good Chargers against Brett Favre and the Jets looks like another blow to RAW cause Brett Favre = Ratings and the Chargers are in the sports news for getting ripped off in that Bronco’s game so lots of people will be watching I am sure of it
This just proves how important good quality games are to NFL ratings. It doesn’t matter network or time, the best games get the best ratings.
Anyone knows what numbers The Closer and Raising the Bar got?
From The Hollywood Reporter:
“Closer” ended its fourth season at 9 p.m. Monday with 7.6 million total viewers tuning in. Although that didn’t match the Season 3 finale of a year ago, when a record 9.2 million viewers watched, the Season 4 conclusion was off only slightly from its fourth-season bow in July (7.8 million).
In the key demos, “Closer” averaged 2.4 million adults 18-49 and 3.2 million 25-54.
Link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3i5a9d5db89bd3dec3dba4fd4133b4a86a
And from Access Atlanta:
But the drama slipped to 5 million viewers week two and 4.5 million Monday night. That’s a 40%-plus dropoff in two weeks. Not even the brighest-eyed optimist can take that as good news. Critics and viewers have complained that the show feels pedestrian and lacks the edge that has kept “The Closer” so popular.
Link: http://www.accessatlanta.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/accessatlanta/radiotalk/entries/2008/09/16/916_tnt_renews.html
Definitely a solid ending for the Closer given the fact that lots of people were watching football. Definitely still a power house show for TNT. I’ve actually just started getting into it, so I’m looking forward to those new episodes in Jan. Random thought: I wonder how this show would do on one of the major broadcast networks? We saw Psych, Monk, and Dexter all tank last year. But, what about The Closer?
Mike, it’s a good question. I have started watching too, though not from the beginning. TNT has been putting epsiodes of The Closer on the on-demand, so that’s been nice. It’s a good question in terms of how it would do on the broadcast networks. I’d need to see all the demo/gender data to have a good read and lack such access. Overall I imagine it would do about as well as the original Law & Order, but not as good as SVU.
Amazing! Even Tony Kornheiser’s never ending rants could negatively affect agreat game.
On a national level, does Nielsen break down how many viewers watched this program via cable vs how many watched via satellite? Also, has anyone tried to come up with a different descriptive name for Channels like ESPN? They’re no longer just cable channels, they’re now satellite and cable channels.
Fred, though I don’t know for certain because we don’t see the full data, I imagine Nielsen is very easily able to break down what % of the numbers were from wired cable vs. satellite. Unfortunately we never see that data.
I think the nomenclature of referrin to all non-broadcast television as “cable” is not likely to change, but I agree with you.
Nomenclature. Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day.
The numbers are broken out on the local level, but only in time period data…not by individual programs. I checked in our market and last November MNF broke out pretty close to the market penetration for Satellite vs Cable: 60% viewers from Cable, 40% from Satellite. Local cable companies use the stories about record viewers for “Cable” programs and neglect to tell their clients that almost half the viewers don’t belong to cable.
I love the website, I refer people to it all the time.
Hi! I really like your theme. Did you make it yourself?
Hi Conchita, thanks. And no, we bought it from woothemes.com last summer for ~$70 (US) and I modified it a bit. It’s probably cheaper now, I haven’t looked in a while — but it was the “Livewire” theme.