National Football League

Football, politics boost NBC's ratings

Published Nov. 13, 2012 9:47 p.m. ET

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The football and political seasons were a boost to NBC in last week's television ratings.

NBC finished a strong second to typical leader CBS in the prime-time ratings, and won handily among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers it courts most fervently, the Nielsen Co. said.

Sunday night's NFL game between Houston and Chicago was the week's most-watched telecast in prime time. NBC's election night coverage with Brian Williams also finished among Nielsen's top 10, beating its ABC and CBS rivals.

Election night wiped out CBS' popular Tuesday night programs, including ''NCIS.''

CBS averaged 9.3 million viewers in prime time (6.0 rating, 10 share). NBC had 8.8 million (5.4, 9), ABC had 8 million (5.1, 8), Fox had 6.3 million (3.8, 6), the CW had 1.7 million (1.1, 2) and ION Television had 1.1 million (0.8,1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.6 million viewer average (1.9, 3), Telemundo had 1.3 million (0,6, 1), TeleFutura had 720,000 (0.4, 1), Estrella had 260,000 and Azteca 130,000 (both are 0.1, 0).

NBC's ''Nightly News'' topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.1 million viewers (6.1, 11). ABC's ''World News'' was second with 8.3 million (5.6, 10) and the ''CBS Evening News'' had 7.1 million viewers (4.8, 9).

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Nov. 5-11, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Houston at Chicago, NBC, 20.86 million; ''The Big Bang Theory,'' CBS, 16.68 million; ''Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,'' NBC, 15.56 million; ''Person of Interest,'' CBS, 14.87 million; ''Two and a Half Men,'' CBS, 14.07 million; ''Dancing With the Stars,'' ABC, 13.48 million; ''Modern Family,'' ABC, 12.43 million; ''Criminal Minds,'' CBS, 12.09 million; Election Night Coverage, NBC, 12.01 million; ''The Voice'' (Monday), NBC, 11.93 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com