The television audiences for the NFL playoffs and last Sunday's conference championship games are the highest on record going back to 1988.
According to the league and Nielsen, the first three weekends of the postseason averaged 38.5 million viewers on television and digital platforms, a 9% increase over last year.
The Kansas City Chiefs' 17-10 win over the Baltimore Ravens averaged 55.47 million on CBS, making it the most-watched AFC championship game ever. The previous mark was 54.85 million when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Jets to advance to the Super Bowl in the 2010 season.
The audience peaked at 64.02 million. It was also CBS' most-watched non-Super Bowl program since the 1994 Winter Olympics in primetime on Feb. 25, 1994.
The San Francisco 49ers' 34-31 comeback victory over the Detroit Lions on Fox averaged 56.69 million, the most-watched NFC championship game since 2012. It is also the fourth-watched non-Super Bowl telecast in network history.
It peaked at 58.97 million during the fourth quarter.
The 56.1 million average for the conference championships is an 11% jump over last year.
CBS, which has the Super Bowl on Feb. 11, is averaging 45.61 million for its postseason games. It is the network's highest average since the NFL returned to the network in 1998 and a 12% increase from last year.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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