ESPN ended the Christmas week on a high note with a primetime ratings win.
The network rode a combination of its college football bowl game coverage, its December 19 Monday Night Football telecast and its Christmas Day NBA telecasts to average 2.4 million primetime viewers for the week of December 19 to December 25 to lead all cable networks for a second straight week, according to Nielsen.
NFL Network, on the strength of its Las Vegas Raiders-Pittsburgh Steelers NFL telecast on Christmas Eve, finished second with 1.6 million viewers.
Fox News Channel finished third for the week with 1.5 million viewers, followed by MSNBC’s 1.2 million viewers and Hallmark Channel’s 1.1 million watchers.
Rounding out the top 10 most-watched networks for the week were Freeform (876,000 viewers), TBS Network (805,000), HGTV (742,000) USA Network (740,000) and AMC (735,000).
Fox News made it 51 straight weekly wins on the total day chart, averaging 1.1 million viewers for the period. ESPN finished second with 866,000 viewers, followed by MSNBC (830,000), Hallmark Channel (723,000) and CNN (514,000), Nielsen said. ■
