National Football League

Phillies beat Eagles in prime-time TV ratings

Published Oct. 12, 2010 10:11 a.m. ET

foxsports

Phillies vs. Eagles in prime time . . . and the television winner is . . .

Locally, the Phillies won Sunday night's ratings duel in a reversal of a similar situation from 2 years ago. Game 3 of the Phillies-Cincinnati National League Division Series produced a 27.7 rating on TBS. The Eagles-San Francisco game on NBC drew a 24.1 rating.

Since one local rating point equals about 30,000 households, the Phillies game was on in about 835,000 households. The Eagles-49ers were watched in about 725,000 households. There are about 3 million TV households in the Philadelphia market.

Nationally, the overnight rating for the Eagles-49ers on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" was 11.7, far outdistancing the 3.9 for Phillies-Reds. It was the second-best NFL prime-time overnight ratings during the baseball divisional playoffs in 8 years.

The football game's trouncing of the Phillies-Reds is attributable to the NFL's national appeal. "Sunday Night Football" has been the highest-rated Sunday night show for the first 4 weeks of the season.

Nationally, one overnight rating point equals just under 1 million households.

Two years ago, the Eagles-Redskins game trounced the ratings for Phillies-Brewers NLDS Game 4. Locally, the Eagles game on Fox drew a 22.7 rating and the Phillies game on TBS posted a 13.8 rating. Of course, that was before the Phillies had won their World Series and they entered the series against the Brewers coming off being swept by Colorado the previous October.

A TBS spokesman said scheduling the Phillies-Reds vs. the Eagles-49ers was unavoidable this year.

Surely, Philly viewers were switching back and forth between the Phillies and Eagles. End of a Phillies-Reds half inning, click, back to the Eagles. When the Phillies game ended shortly after 11 p.m., the Eagles-49ers peaked at a 12.9 rating from 11:30 to 11:45 p.m. *