Packers-Saints TV Ratings High, But Down From Last Year
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:28PM Thursday's night's Green Bay Packers victory over the New Orleans Saints delivered reliably huge ratings for NBC. But the game was nevertheless down a bit compared with last year's NFL season kickoff.
Thursday's game tackled a 17.2 overnight rating/28 share, making it the second-highest-rated NFL kickoff game in 13 years, says Nielsen. It happened to be down 3% compared with last year's gigantic opener between the Saints and the Minnesota Vikings.
Overnight ratings measure the 55 largest TV markets, covering nearly 70 percent of the country. Each overnight rating point represents about 735,000 TV homes. The rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
Was is because these are two small market teams? Was it because the Packers appeared to be on their way to a blowout win, or are fans disenchanted afterthe long NFL lockout? Also, viewing might have been thrown off a bit by President Obama's jobs speech that was carried live before the game.
We'll see how ratings look this week as there are some good matchups.
NFL, Tv ratings, packers vs. Saints, television in Events, Football, Sports, Television 