ARLINGTON, TX – JANUARY 15: Mason Crosby #2 of the Green Bay Packers kicks a field goal to beat the Dallas Cowboys 34-31 in the NFC Divisional Playoff Game at AT&T Stadium on January 15, 2017 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
CBSFoxNBCNFLRatingsBy Ken Fang on

Thanks to two close games on Sunday, the NFL’s TV partners drew huge overnight ratings. Green Bay at Dallas on Fox in the 4;40 p.m. ET window and Pittsburgh at Kansas City on NBC in the makeshift primetime window both drew great numbers. With the Packers-Cowboys game going back and forth finally resulting in a last-second 34-31 Green Bay victory, it drew not only the best overnights of the weekend, but according to Sports TV Ratings, the GB-Dallas game drew the best divisional playoff overnight ratings in 20 years:

And that’s buffered by a tweet from the Fox Sports public relations account which said the game looks to be the most-watched program since Super Bowl 50 and that includes the 2016 Olympics:

The latest

As mentioned in the Sports TV Ratings tweet, the Pittsburgh-KC game averaged a 21.9 overnight which is the best primetime number in the divisional round. And with that rating, the conventional wisdom is that the NFL would likely schedule playoff games in the Sunday night window in the future.

That was bolstered by a story from ESPN’s Adam Schefter over the weekend that the NFL is exploring the possibility of bringing the playoffs into Sunday night permanently:

Switching a Sunday playoff game from the afternoon to night could bring an extra 10-plus million viewers, according to an industry source.

Playing on Sunday night would cost the winning team valuable preparation time for the next Sunday’s conference championship game — but it’s nothing teams don’t deal with all season long.

While we’re not close to that yet, one has to think what we saw yesterday, a 4:40/8:20 p.m. ET schedule or perhaps 3:05/6:40 p.m. windows like on Conference Championship Sunday could be in the cards for viewers in the near future.

UPDATE: The final numbers are out and they are truly amazing. First, the Packers-Cowboys game drew the best viewership for a television program since Super Bowl 50 last February. From Fox’s Mike Mulvihill, the averaged a huge viewership peaking over 60 million:

That’s big and proves again the late Sunday afternoon window is the most-watched timeslot for the NFL.

But in primetime, NBC nor the NFL are not complaining. For Pittsburgh-Kansas City, the game became the most-watched and highest-rated NFL Wild Card or Divisional primetime playoff game.

On NBC alone, the game averaged an astounding 37.1 million viewers peaking at 39.1 million from 9-9:30 p.m. ET. And that’s up 8% from the previous primetime record, New Orleans-Philadelphia in the Wild Card round that had an average audience of 34.4 million in 2014.

The game posted a 19.8/32 rating/share making it the highest-rated primetime playoff game ever. And the previous record was 19.1/31 for Saints-Eagles.

Expect a Sunday primetime playoff window to become reality sooner than later.

[Sports TV Ratings/ESPN.com]

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.

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