‘Thursday Night Football’ Snares 14.6M Viewers, Down Despite Eagles’ Win – Update

UPDATED, 2:05 PM: Last night’s Thursday Night Football turns out to be, to paraphrase Herman’s Hermits, a case of third verse same as the first.

With the final numbers now in, the Philadelphia Eagles vs. the Carolina Panthers game saw the City of Brotherly Love team win, the national anthem not shown and CBS and the NFL Network down from last week.

Snagging 14.6 million viewers over the two outlets, the 2017-2018 Week 6 match-up is down 5% from the New England Patriots victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That is essentially what last night’s game was down from the October 5 TNF in fast affiliates and metered market results earlier today.

Compared to the comparable game of last year, the Eagles 28-23 win over the Panthers was steady with the 14.5 million who tuned in for the Denver Broncos and then San Diego Chargers game of October 13, 2016.

Over the House of Moonves, the NFL’s cable outlet plus Amazon Prime Video, NFL Digital and CBS digital platform last night’s game was seen by around 15.1 million viewers. Of those, about 375,000 were watching on Amazon, who are on the field so to speak for the first time this season.

PREVIOUSLY, 7:25 AM: If you watched the Philadelphia Eagles 28-23 win over the Carolina Panthers on Thursday Night Football last night you would have seen the home turf team’s Luke Kuechly exit the game in the second quarter due to a possible concussion.

However, despite a potential move by the NFL to disallow protest by players during the national anthem, one thing you would have not seen on TNF on CBS and the NFL Network last night was the playing of the national anthem.

As the controversy over players taking a knee or raising a fist over social injustice shows no signs of abating, the net and the league took a default position and decided not to show the national anthem or the response in Charlotte last night. As social media went into overdrive in reaction, the TV audience did not see the Panthers all stand for the song, nor the Eagles’ Malcolm Jenkins and Rodney McLeod each raise a fist into the air with teammate Chris Long appear to show solidarity.

Yet, with the Eagles vs. Panthers match-up getting a 10.6/18 in metered market results on CBS and NFL Network, perhaps there was some of the once usual NFL audience who choose not to watch at all. Last night’s game was down 5% from last week’s big draw New England Patriots 19-14 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where all the players stood during the national anthem in part in tribute to the victims of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas just days before. That October 5 game was up 12% in the early numbers from the TNF opener on CBS of September 28.

As of last week, the 2017-2018 NFL season is down almost 8% in viewers from the same Week 5 point in the 2016-2017 season.

Over halfway through the House of Moonves’ TNF package for this definitely ratings perplexed and politically tainted season, the Eagles and Panthers dust-up faced an additional challenge in the Chicago Cubs seeing off the Washington Nationals 9-8. This means the World Series champs now progress to take on the L.A. Dodgers in the National League Championship this weekend in the City of Angels.

Still, with an easy primetime win overall for CBS, last night’s game had an uptick of 7% from the comparable Denver Broncos and the then San Diego Chargers gridiron battle of October 13 last year. Facing Division series winning baseball and Hurricane Matthew barreling towards Florida and the Southeast states, that Chargers 21-13 win eventually scored a 4.7/17 rating and 14.49 million viewers.

Last week’s Super Bowl champs Patriots victory over Tampa Bay snagged a final rating of 5.0/19 and a total viewership of 15.43 million.

We’ll update with more NFL ratings as well as numbers for the Arrow and Supernatural season debuts and everything else that was on last night later. In the meantime, last night’s game peaked with a 11.5/9 in the 9:30 – 10 PM slot on CBS and NFL Network. As in past weeks, the game was also shown on Amazon Prime Video – we don’t have numbers for that digital play yet but last week’s Patriots vs. Tampa Bay match-up pulled in an audience average of 391,000 viewers.

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