The New England Patriots’ 27-26 road win over the New York Giants Sunday brought big dividends for CBS. The network announced Tuesday that their Week 10 national window, led by the 4:30 Eastern Patriots-Giants game, was their most-watched and highest-rated NFL game so far in the 2015 season, producing an average viewership of 28.3 million and an average preliminary national household rating/share of 16.3/30. It was also the most-watched NFL game on any network in Week 10.
This is good news for CBS not just from a standpoint of this year, as it’s a seven per cent boost in viewers over the comparable November Miami-Denver/Washington-San Francisco doubleheader last year, and a five per cent increase in rating/share. The peak was also promising, with an average of 35.3 million viewers and a rating/share of 20.0/30 for the finish from 7:30 to 7:57 p.m. Eastern.
Patriots-Giants is an intriguing highly-rated matchup, as they’re both in big markets, and there’s significant recent history between the teams thanks to 2008’s Super Bowl XLII and 2012’s Super Bowl XLVI, won by the Giants by scores of 17-14 and 21-17 respectively. However, the teams don’t face each other frequently thanks to playing in different conferences. This was only the second regular-season matchup between them since the 2008 game, with the first one being a Giants’ 24-20 road win in November 2011, so it was also the Patriots’ first real revenge on the Giants for those Super Bowl losses. If recent history’s any indication, games between these teams are both compelling from a football standpoint and highly-rated. Unfortunately, unless they run into each other in the Super Bowl again, it seems they won’t play until 2019. You can bet whichever network gets that game will probably be waiting eagerly in anticipation…
