CBS and NFL Network averaged an 11.4 overnight rating for its first "Thursday Night Football" telecast of the '16 season, which saw the Jets defeat the Bills 37-31. That figure does not include any streaming data from Twitter. The 11.4 is down from a 14.3 overnight for the first "TNF" game last year, which featured Broncos-Chiefs. While down from that Peyton Manning-led telecast, Jets-Bills is still above the 9.1 overnight average for "TNF" last season. Jets-Bills peaked twice at a 12.0 rating on Thursday night -- from 9:00-9:30pm ET and 9:30-10:00pm. The game delivered CBS a primetime win among all nets. Buffalo led all markets with a 38.9 local rating, while N.Y. drew a 15.4 rating (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
SHOOT FOR THE MOON: CBS Chair & CEO Les Moonves on Thursday told investors that he was "confident" that the net "eventually would be able to work out a deal to simulcast NFL games via its OTT service, CBS All Access." Moonves: "I anticipate before too long that we'll be able to make a deal with the NFL. We talk to them a lot. They know our desire to get (the games) on our service, and we think a deal will happen in the not-too-distant future." He added that the net would "likely break even on its slimmed-down new Thursday night NFL package, which features three fewer games" than in '14 and '15. Moonves: "We had eight games last year. I like that better, although we lost more money. You never like seeing a competitor getting a part of what you do, but such is the NFL. They're the 800-lb gorilla, and when the NFL says 'jump,' you say, 'yes sir.' ... We're sort of happy with the hand that we're playing. We didn't even look at Major League Baseball. We did not look at the NBA. We're happy with what we have, and some of those deals are probably not profitable" (ADAGE.com, 9/15).
FALLING SHORT: In St. Louis, Dan Caesar notes the Rams "fled St. Louis in the offseason for the riches and glamour of Southern California." However, the television rating the team drew there for its first regular-season game after an "absence of more than two decades fell short of what it did for an opener in all but two of 21 seasons in St. Louis." Monday night's Rams-49ers game game drew a 16.1 rating in the L.A. market. In contrast, the rating in St. Louis last year for the Rams opener was a 17.7 "despite rampant speculation about the move and the contest starting at noon on a Sunday." In fact, the only times the St. Louis Rams "drew a season-opening rating lower than the number Monday" in L.A. was in '08, when a game against the Eagles "generated a 12.0 rating" and a 16.0 figure for a contest in '14 against the Vikings. They averaged a 22.4 rating for their 21 openers while based in St. Louis, and "only one of those games was in prime time" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 9/16).
