Who needs football? Well, NBC for starters — and also Fox and CBS, albeit to somewhat lesser degrees.
TheWrap re-ran network TV ratings to include primetime scripted series only — so, omitting sports, specials and reality series — to see who owns the written word on the small screen. As it turns out, the pared-down way of looking at most current (where available) Nielsen numbers jumps ABC from third to first place among the Big 4 networks.
Both originals and repeats were included in this report, which accounted for data from the 2014-2015 season shows through Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015.
The results of our study shows ABC leading runner-up CBS by 13 percent, with an average rating/share of 2.7/8 against the lower 2.4/7 in the advertiser-sought 18-49 demographic.
Sans football, "The Voice" and "Peter Pan Live" — among other unqualified-in-this-scenario broadcasts — NBC settled for third with a 2.1/6.
Fox finished in fourth place with a 1.9/6.