Spurred by a revitalized Friday night lineup, USA Network last week returned to its familiar perch atop the cable ratings heap, averaging 3.09 million viewers in prime. But as has been the case throughout the fall season, the NBC Universal network couldn’t hold off ESPN in the core demos.
For the week ended Nov. 22, ESPN maintained its supremacy among adults 25-54 (1.45 million), viewers 18-49 (1.45 million) and viewers 18-34 (743,000), as even a substandard Monday Night Football draw proved sufficient to trump USA.
Drawing 10.2 million viewers, the Nov. 16 Browns-Ravens game now stands as the lowest-rated MNF telecast of the year. An underwhelming 4-4 Baltimore franchise blanked the woeful 1-7 Browns by a 16-0 margin, in an AFC North scrum that featured three scoreless quarters of play.
Despite the relatively low turnout, MNF did well enough to walk away with top marks among the demos, drawing 5.36 million viewers 18-49, 5.43 million adults 25-54 and 2.52 million viewers 18-34, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day ratings data.
On the week, ESPN averaged 2.93 million total viewers.
USA Network took second place among the two larger demos, averaging 1.37 million adults 25-54 and 1.29 million viewers 18-49. Tops among USA’s program deliveries were: the Nov. 20 installment of Monk, which drew 5.3 million viewers in its Friday 9 p.m. time slot, and lead-out White Collar, which continues to rebound from an anomalous third-week plummet, averaging 4.56 million viewers.
White Collar improved 7 percent from the prior week’s delivery (4.28 million), and grew 18 percent after dropping to 3.85 million viewers on Nov. 6.
USA also got a lift from the ever reliable WWE Raw, which averaged 5.05 million viewers Monday night between 9 p.m. and 11:16 p.m.
Fox News Channel retained third place, serving up 2.44 million total viewers, while moving up to seventh among the core news demo with an average nightly draw of 655,000 adults 25-54. FNC boasted its biggest delivery with the Nov. 18 installment of Hannity, thanks to a special guest appearance by former Alaska Governor/GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who helped scare up 4.2 million viewers in the 9 p.m. time slot.
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