By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --There’s nothing like two overtime games in the NFL conference championships to keep television viewers glued to their recliners.
The New England Patriots’ thrilling victory over the Kansas City Chiefs was seen by 53.92 million viewers on Sunday, the Nielsen company said. That’s up 22 percent from the Patriots’ victory over Jacksonville last year, and the most watched AFC championship since 2011.
Sunday’s afternoon game, where the Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints with the help of a referee’s bad call, was seen by 44.2 million people, Nielsen said. That’s up 4 percent over last year’s contest between Philadelphia and Minnesota.
Frigid temperatures throughout most of the country in the middle of a holiday weekend no doubt helped television attendance.
The NFL says ratings for all of its playoff games are up 12 percent over last year’s post-season. There’s a strong chance Sunday night’s game will be the year’s second most-watched television event, after the Super Bowl in two weeks.
With the AFC championship on Sunday night, CBS cruised to a dominant weekly victory in the prime-time ratings, averaging 14.2 million viewers. NBC averaged 5 million viewers in prime-time, ABC had 4.1 million, Fox had 3.2 million, Univision had 1.4 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, Telemundo had 1.2 million and the CW had 1 million.
Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.19 million viewers in prime-time. MSNBC had 2.01 million, Hallmark had 1.36 million, HGTV had 1.23 million and USA had 1.22 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.8 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 8.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.9 million.
Below are primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Jan. 14-20. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.
1. AFC Championship: New England vs. Kansas City, CBS, 53.92 million.
2. “AFC Championship Post Game,” CBS, 24.34 million.
3. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 13.33 million.
4. “NCIS,” CBS, 12.22 million.
5. “Young Sheldon,” CBS, 11.46 million.
6. “AGT Champions,” NBC, 9.99 million.
7. “FBI,” CBS, 9.34 million.
8. “Magnum, P.I.,” CBS, 8.76 million.
9. “Chicago Med,” NBC, 8.51 million.
10. “Mom,” CBS, 8.46 million.
11. “Chicago Fire,” CBS, 8.03 million.
12. “This is Us,” NBC, 7.75 million.
13. “Hawaii Five-0,” CBS, 7.62 million.
14. “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 7.29 million.
15. “Chicago PD,” NBC, 7.26 million.
16. “Bull,” CBS, 7.09 million.
17. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 7.08 million.
18. “The Masked Singer,” Fox, 6.95 million.
19. “MacGyver,” CBS, 6.9 million.
20. “The Neighborhood,” CBS, 6.83 million.
ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.; CBS is a division of CBS Corp.; Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox; NBC is owned by NBC Universal.
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More