Sports Media Notebook: NFL, NASCAR college football overnights, MNF in Mexico and other things

Let’s open up the notebook for a Thanksgiving Monday. Plenty of items to mention as we get into holiday mode. Some overnight ratings from the weekend and a few other things that deserve mention.

NFL OVERNIGHTS

The NFL’s continues to rebound after a tough first half of the season. If you believe that the presidential election had a lot to do with the lower ratings, then you have another week to lend credence to that theory.

CBS is happy to note that its late Sunday afternoon window featuring a crossflexed Philadelphia-Seattle  going to most of the country and New England-San Francisco garnered a 15.4/27 overnight rating/share. That’s the highest-rated NFL window for CBS this season.

In addition, CBS’ early window featuring Baltimore-Dallas averaged an 11.9/24 which was the highest-rated regional window for the Tiffany Network since Week 6 of the 2015 season.

NBC Sports PR tweets that the Peacock had an 11.9/19 overnight rating for Green Bay-Washington and that is up two percent from last year’s Cincinnati-Arizona game in the same week. It marks the second consecutive week that Sunday Night Football has increased from the year before.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal says Missouri-Tennessee did not help the SEC on CBS this week. It received a 1.5 overnight rating in the 3:30 p.m. ET window on Saturday and it was beaten by the 1.6 number registered for Virginia Tech-Notre on NBC.

ESPN’s slate of games this past weekend gave the Worldwide Leader its two highest overnights of the season.

Ohio State-Michigan State at noon ET Saturday — 4.2
Indiana-Michigan at 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday — 3.2

In addition, USC-UCLA in the 10:30 p.m. ET window for ESPN averaged a 1.8 overnight, the highest-rated Pac-12 game of the weekend and the best for a 10 p.m. ET or later kickoff across all networks.

NASCAR

NASCAR continues its ratings downward spiral. The last Sprint Cup race of the season which saw Jimmy Johnson win his seventh championship brought a 3.3 overnight to NBC, but that was down from the 4.4 it earned last year.

MISCELLANEOUS

If you’re not able to watch tonight’s Monday Night Football game in Mexico:

ESPN is in Mexico City!
(Two football teams are too!)
I kid. I kid.

— Peter Schrager (@PSchrags) November 21, 2016

Westwood One Radio will have the game broadcast, but instead of the usual Kevin Harlan calling the game with either Boomer Esiason, Dan Fouts or Kurt Warner, the game between Houston and Oakland will be have Armando Quintero on the play-by-play, Benny Ricardo on the color analysis and Brady Poppinga on the sidelines.

Quintero and Ricardo were the lead announcers for the NFL on Westwood One from 2002-05 and currently call NFL games for CBS on SAP. Poppinga works for Westwood One as an NFL and college football analyst.

And one more note for you. EPIX and the NHL have announced they’ll partner for a third season of Road to the NHL Outdoor Series. The Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues will be chronicled for the NHL Winter Classic and the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs for the NHL Centennial Classic.