A strong one Sunday evening football The play and strong showings of many of its long-running series helped NBC claim its biggest audience for the first week of the 2024-25 season.
The network averaged 6.2 million primetime viewers for the week of Sept. 23-29, according to same-day Nielsen data (which doesn't include streaming or other time-shifted viewing). NBC has topped the season's opening week in total viewers for six straight years and 13 straight among adults 18-49.
ABC came in second for the week with 5.4 million viewers, helped by two big sports broadcasts (Monday night football and the primetime Saturday college football game) followed by CBS (3.3 million) and Fox (1.8 million).
There's a bit of a caveat here, however, as CBS is waiting until mid-October to launch much of its lineup. Sunday evening football it would probably still keep NBC on top — see the six-year winning streak in week one, above — but the margins would likely be smaller. CBS has won 16 consecutive seasons from September to May in total viewers.
Even without the NFL, NBC still finished atop premiere week: Measuring entertainment programming alone, it averaged 4.2 million viewers, once again ahead of CBS (2.9 million), ABC (2.8 million) and Fox (1.8 million). NBC aired six of the week's ten most-watched non-sports programs, led by season premieres of The Voice (5.96 million viewers) e Chicago fire (5.6 million) and the season finale of America is talented (5.46 million), which ranked second, third and fourth for the week. CBS' 60 minutes was first with 9.57 million viewers.