Last weekend’s NFL divisional round playoff games averaged 39.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen, the second-most watched since audience average numbers started being tracked in 1988.<\/p>\n
It was just off the record of 40 million, which happened two years ago. The four games were up 5% from last year.<\/p>\n
Some of the increase can be attributed to a change in the way viewers are counted. Nielsen began using its Big Data + Panel methodology for all events last September with the start of the current television season.<\/p>\n
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Earlier this year, Nielsen began measuring out-of-home viewers for all states but Hawaii and Alaska, along with including data from smart TVs along with cable and satellite set-top boxes.<\/p>\n
Nielsen previously measured only the top 44 media markets, which covered 65% of the country.<\/p>\n
Sunday night’s overtime thriller between the Los Angeles Rams<\/a> and Chicago Bears<\/a> led the way, averaging 45.4 million viewers on NBC. The audience peaked at 52.6 million in the game’s closing minutes.<\/p>\n The Rams’ 20-17 victory was the most-watched divisional playoff game for NBC, surpassing the previous mark of 41.1 million in January 1994, when Joe Montana and the Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> defeated Warren Moon and the Houston Oilers. It also was the most-watched prime-time event since last February’s Super Bowl on Fox.<\/p>\n Denver<\/a>‘s 33-30 overtime victory over Buffalo<\/a> on CBS set the mark for the most-watched Saturday NFL playoff game, averaging 39.6 million. It peaked at 51.28 million during overtime.<\/p>\n The previous Saturday record was 37.54 million for a Green Bay<\/a>–San Francisco<\/a> divisional round game in prime time on Fox two years ago.<\/p>\n The previous high for the Saturday early window was 35.60 million for New Orleans<\/a>–San Francisco<\/a> on Jan. 14, 2012.<\/p>\n The Broncos’ win over the Bills was also the most-watched Saturday telecast on any network since the 1994 Winter Olympics on CBS averaged 40.82 million in prime time on Feb. 19.<\/p>\n Sunday afternoon’s AFC game between Houston<\/a> and New England<\/a> averaged 37.97 million on ESPN, ABC and ESPN Deportes, the most-watched event in ESPN’s nearly 37-year history. It also stands as the most-watched telecast on a Disney-owned network since 2014.<\/p>\n The Patriots’ 28-16 win peaked at 44.9 million viewers late in the second half.<\/p>\n Seattle<\/a>‘s 41-6 rout of San Francisco<\/a> averaged 32.1 million on Fox. It was a slight drop from the 33.6 million that tuned in for last year’s Washington<\/a>–Detroit<\/a> game in the same Saturday night time slot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last weekend’s NFL divisional round playoff games averaged 39.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen, the second-most watched since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-431527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}