Stage is Set for Another Sunday Night Football Ratings Score
NBC is averaging 21.5 million viewers per NFL regular-season telecast, the network’s best 10-week start since acquiring the SNF package in 2006. Primetime TV’s most-watched show this fall, Sunday Night Football has been primetime’s No. 1 show for each of the past two television seasons.
NBC NFL telecasts account for TV’s eight most-watched primetime shows since September, based on live plus same day data.
Sunday night’s matchup between two of the best teams in the NFL, led by quarterbacks who have a combined 36-6-1 record since the start of the 2012 season, will mark the first time in 44 years that clubs with records of 9-0 and 8-1 or better have faced each other. The game features a clash between Denver’s offense, which leads the league in scoring, and Kansas City’s defense which has allowed the fewest points through nine games this season.
Calling Chiefs-Broncos is seven-time Emmy Award-winner Al Michaels (play-by-play), in his 28th season as the voice of the NFL’s premier primetime package; 14-time Emmy Award-winner Cris Collinsworth, who has won the Emmy for Outstanding Event Analyst in each of his four seasons in the Sunday Night Football booth; and Emmy Award-winning sideline reporter Michele Tafoya.
NBC’s coverage of Sunday Night Football is led by Emmy Award-winning coordinating producer Fred Gaudelli and Emmy Award-winning director Drew Esocoff. Sunday Night Football has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Sports Series for five consecutive years.
Football Night In America, the most-watched pre-game show in sports, is hosted by 25-time Emmy Award-winner Bob Costas, who will report from Sports Authority Field at Mile High, in Denver, Colo. Costas will be joined on-site by Michaels, Collinsworth and former NFL Executive of the Year, Scott Pioli, who from 2009-2012 served as GM of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Dan Patrick co-hosts Football Night from NBC’s famed Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Patrick will be joined by Super Bowl-winning head coach Tony Dungy, two-time Super Bowl winner Rodney Harrison, two-time Super Bowl winner and Super Bowl XL MVP Hines Ward, and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk on NBCSN and NBCSports.com. Carolyn Manno will report from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, La. on the 49ers-Saints game.
For the sixth consecutive season, the entire Sunday Night Football schedule will be streamed live online. NBC Sports Live Extra, NBC Sports Group’s live streaming product for desktops and tablets, will stream all SNF games televised on NBC. The video stream will come directly from NBC’s broadcast of SNF, and will include additional camera angles and interactive features.
(Photo: AP Images)