While it’s no secret that live sports programming is just about the only thing keeping the lights on in the linear TV space, the NFL continues to find new ways to underscore how it puts the “broad” in broadcasting. Here’s one that may be of interest to even the most staunch TV doomers: In October, network TV accounted for 27.3% of all viewing on Sundays, which marked a significant improvement from broadcast’s performance during the rest of the week (22%).
According to Nielsen’s latest Gauge report, broadcasters last month enjoyed a 5.3% gain in share on NFL Sundays, a boost that was in marked contrast to how things fared on cable and streaming platforms. Cable watch-time fell from 22.7% on Monday-Saturday to 20% on any given Sunday in October, while streaming slipped from 45.7% share on those same six days to 44.6% on the day of the week in which CBS, Fox and NBC air their respective slates of NFL windows.
All told, live sports—including college football and the World Series—accounted for nearly one-third of all broadcast TV consumption in October.
The Sunday broadcast boost coincides with a strong NFL ratings season, which through Week 10 is averaging 17.6 million viewers per window, up 7% versus the year-ago period. This marks the league’s highest deliveries at this point in the season since 2015. The NFL’s outsized audience thus far has scared up an estimated $2.09 billion in ad sales, as unit pricing across the TV platforms remains elevated compared to last season’s in-game rates. (Bonus fun: Thanks to the steady growth of impressions, the networks are pocketing nearly all those advertising dollars, as make-good obligations have been few and far between.)
For all that, as much as the NFL continues to provide a weekly justification of its nosebleed rights fees, the big-picture decline in U.S. television consumption continues more or less unabated. Per Nielsen, broadcast and cable accounted for 45.1% of all video share last month, and while that was up considerably compared to the dog days of July (40.6%), the flight to streaming platforms is fast and furious. In October 2024, TV claimed a 50.3% share, which itself was down from 54.1% just 12 months earlier. Go back to October 2021, when Nielsen first began issuing its Gauge reports, and the contrast is striking, with linear TV claiming 65.3% of share.
Over the same four-year span in which TV lost 20.2 points of share, streaming platforms jumped from a 28% piece of the video pie to 45.7%. While somewhat limited, given the sheer volume of on-demand programming options available, the NFL’s impact on streaming arguably may best be viewed through the lens of Amazon’s exclusive Thursday Night Football package. According to Nielsen, Prime Video last month accounted for 6.4% of all “TV” consumption on Thursdays, up from its full-month average of 3.8%.
If Nielsen’s latest batch of usage data goes a long way toward explaining why the NFL is an important part of a balanced TV diet, perhaps nothing illustrates the league’s disproportionate impact than MoffettNathanson’s annual contribution breakdown. NFL games and shoulder programming represented 61% of the time viewers spent with Fox during the 2024-25 NFL season, and while the proportion is somewhat skewed by the network’s more compact two-hour primetime schedule—by way of comparison with the old school nets that program from 8 p.m. through 11 p.m., the league accounted for 34% of CBS’ consumption over the same period and 31% of NBC’s—the impact is impossible to overlook.
Season-to-date, Fox’s sports contribution is over 90% when you toss in the network’s college football schedule and its seven nights of World Series impressions.
NBC, for its part, earned bragging rights for serving up the most-viewed program across all media in October, as its coverage of the Week 6 Lions-Chiefs game averaged 27.3 million viewers, edging CBS’ 49ers-Bucs broadcast earlier in the day (26.8 million). That said, NBC’s Sunday Night Football deliveries include streaming estimates from Adobe Analytics. When those non-Nielsen figures are eliminated from the ratings calculus, CBS prevailed by a margin of 2.28 million TV viewers.
NBC’s NFL showcase averaged 6.96 million adults 18-49 during the four October airings, dwarfing everything else in prime. Season-to-date, the average entertainment/non-sports program on the Big Four nets is eking out just 419,297 members of the under-50 set per night, which works out to 16.6-times multiple for SNF. Expressed in standard ratings notation, SNF averaged a 5.1 in the dollar demo last month, up 1,600% versus a 0.3 live-same-day rating for everything else in prime. Ergo NBC’s average price for a single 30-second in-game unit, which is north of $1 million a throw.
The nearest threat to NBC’s dominance on that score is ABC’s top-rated competition series, Dancing with the Stars, which through eight episodes is averaging 1.69 million adults 18-49, or a 1.2 rating. Now in its 58th season on CBS, the Sunday newsmagazine 60 Minutes is currently averaging 9.45 million weekly viewers, of whom 1.37 million are adults under 50. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the handful of broadcast entertainment shows that are meant to be consumed as close to real time as possible are leading the pack as scripted fare continues to migrate to streaming/over-the-top platforms.
Per Nielsen, this season’s two biggest scripted demo draws are Fox’s The Simpsons, averaging 703,287 adults 18-49 in live-same-day, and the 60 Minutes lead-out Tracker (680,600). Both shows air on Sunday nights opposite NBC’s NFL showcase.