Football, Chicago dramas lead NBC to ratings victory

NEW YORK (AP) - Football and mayhem in Chicago, unrelated to the NFL’s Bears, dominated the top of the television rankings last week.

While NBC’s Sunday night football game was the most-watched program of the week, producer Dick Wolf’s trio of Windy City-set dramas all finished among the Nielsen company’s list of the top television programs. “Chicago Med,” ’’Chicago PD” and “Chicago Fire” were all seen by more than 8 million viewers.

That led NBC to victory in the weekly ratings race. Fox, with a Thursday night football game between Kansas City and Denver, finished second.

Since Nielsen’s weekly list measures only same-day viewership, the top of the rankings is dominated by live sports and competition shows like “The Voice” and “The Masked Singer.” ’’NCIS” remains the top scripted program.

CNN’s coverage of the latest Democratic presidential debate was seen by 8.6 million viewers, Nielsen said.

NBC averaged 7 million viewers for the week, with runner-up Fox grabbing 6.1 million. CBS had 5.7 million, ABC had 4.3 million, Telemundo had 1.4 million, Univision had 1.3 million, ION Television had 1.2 million and the CW had 860,000.

ESPN was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.82 million viewers. Fox News Channel had 2.6 million, CNN had 1.96 million, TBS had 1.8 million and MSNBC had 1.79 million.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.2 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 7.4 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million viewers.

For the week of Oct. 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Philadelphia at Dallas, NBC, 21.45 million; “NFL Pregame Show,” NBC, 16.28 million; NFL Football: Kansas City at Denver, Fox, 14.02 million; NFL Football: Detroit at Green Bay, ESPN, 14 million; “NFL Postgame Show,” Fox, 11.97 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 10.88 million; “Football Night in America,” NBC, 10.36 million; “Chicago Med,” NBC, 8.94 million; “FBI,” CBS, 8.76 million; “Chicago PD,” NBC, 8.63 million.

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ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by Fox Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com