With an exceptional matchup of two of the top NFL teams, ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football’ became the master of Monday television viewing as the Seattle Seahawks crushed the New Orleans Saints to take the top spot in the NFL rankings for home turf during the playoffs. 15.550 million viewers made this cable channel the #1 in all of American television on this evening.
NBC came in with the strongest slate of broadcast programming on Monday with ‘The Voice’ leading it off at 8P with a two-hour session pulling in 12.4 million viewers. At 10P, the return of ‘The Blacklist’ after a one week hiatus, drew 12.3 million viewers. This number will grow tremendously due to its usual #1 Live+7 viewing pull. Without ‘Castle’ to challenge it, it placed second to ESPN.
ABC brought in the holiday rerun, ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ and pulled in a very good 7.09 million viewers. At 9P, in a two-hour special, the ‘CMA Country Christmas’ drew 7.35 million, giving The Alphabet Network an average of 7.18 million viewers for the evening.
CBS with its disastrous decision to place a poor performing drama at the 10P spot, pulled down the rest of the entire schedule and averaged 6.897 million viewers. AT 8P, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ drew 7.91 million; at 830P, ‘2 Broke Girls’ pulled up the schedule to 8.35 million; at 9P, ‘Mike & Molly’ had The Tiffany Network’s biggest total of the evening, 8.57 million viewers but at 930P, the new comedy, ‘Mom’, fell back to 7.63 million. Then at 10P, ‘Hostages’ dragged everything the network had done on this evening by pulling just 4.46 million viewers to watch it.
FOX began the evening with its newest drama, ‘Almost Human’ with an intriguing episode that involved synthetic drug trafficking and a dirty cop, drew 5.79 million viewers. Then at 9P, a rerun of ‘Sleepy Hollow’ dropped the audience down to 3.1 million. The average for the evening for The Animal Network of Broadcast was 4.45 million viewers.
The USA Network with ‘WWE’ all night long, drew 3.541 million viewers, with its top hour at 8P with 3.615 million viewers. At 9P it pulled in 3.560 million and at 10P, 3.447 million viewers. As you can see, it is quite consistent throughout the evening.
VH1 had its usually big Monday evening with ‘Love and Hip Hop 4’ at 8P drawing 2.959 million viewers and at 9P, ‘Chrissy and Mr. Jones 2’ pulling in 2.432 million. At 930P, ‘Black Ink Crew 2’ drew 2.177 while at 1030P, ‘Love and Hip Hop 4’ rerun pulled in an additional 1.537. For the evening, VH1 drew an average of 2.374 million viewers in prime time.
TNT, long a power on Monday nights, came in with an average prime time viewership of 2.816 million viewers, topped off by ‘Major Crimes’ at 9P with 4.212 million, the second highest draw on cable for the evening.
The CW ran ‘A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie’, a rerun at 8P and drew 1.12 million for the evening.
In late night, ‘Leno’ was king with a 2.5/7 while ‘Kimmel’ came in second with a 2.2/6. ‘Letterman’ had a rerun and drew 1.9/5. ‘Fallon’ topped all at 1235A with a 1.4/5, ‘Nightline’ came in second with 1.3/4 while ‘Ferguson’ finished last with 1.0/4.
For the record, ESPN was #1 with 15.55 million viewers as NBC came in #2 with 12.37 million. ABC was next with 7.18 million while CBS finished #4 with 6.897 million. FOX had 4.45 million while The USA Network had 3.541 million viewers. TNT pulled in 2.816 million while VH1 drew 2.374 million. The CW came in with 1.12 million for the evening.
What one could tell for a fact was that people were…
Switching Channels!
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