The Week 6 matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Jets on Sunday averaged 26.09 million viewers on Fox, marking the largest NFL television audience of the year so far. Here’s what you need to know:
New York’s 20-14 win gave the Jets their first victory over the Eagles in franchise history and handed Philadelphia its first loss of the season.
The Nielsen-measured viewership topped the previous high of 25.78 million viewers for the CBS window featuring the Jets and Dallas Cowboys in Week 2.
This week, the Eagles (5-1) face the 5-1 Miami Dolphins in a “Sunday Night Football” matchup on NBC. The Jets have a bye before playing the New York Giants on Oct. 29 on CBS.
Worth noting
Earlier this year, NBC Sports reported three games with higher total viewership than Eagles-Jets via NBC’s Total Audience Delivery (TAD) measurement, which measures metrics across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital platforms. For example: The Lions-Chiefs NFL Kickoff Game averaged 27.5 million viewers across these platforms (Nielsen measured it at 24.8 million without streaming numbers).
Apples-to-apples comparisons, as The Athletic has written often, are very tough to make in 2023, so here is additional context. — Richard Deitsch, sports media senior writer
Why the high numbers?
It’s always worth repeating: The late-afternoon Sunday window for NFL games is the most-watched window in television. If you are a sports television programmer at CBS or Fox, you want teams here with a long history of viewership might (such as Dallas, Green Bay and Pittsburgh) or teams that are competitive from big markets (e.g., Philadelphia) in the window.
New York, of course, is the nation’s biggest media market based on population (which is different from a household rating, where Kansas City and Buffalo are the two best local markets in the NFL) so when the Giants or Jets are competitive, it can amp up league viewership strictly based on demographics.
The Lions-Bucs and Cardinals–Rams games were rolled up in this Sunday window but it was the Eagles-Jets game that carried the viewership as it went to 63 percent of the country. The Eagles are a fantastic team and will draw national viewership whenever they play. But the thing to watch here is the Jets: If they can stay competitive given how many national windows they have (thanks to the Aaron Rodgers trade), it will really help the NFL’s viewership fortunes later this year. — German
Required reading
(Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
2023-10-17 21:24:07
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