Overnight Rating For Djokovic-Nadal U.S. Open Final Up 18% From Last Year

CBS earned a 2.6 overnight Nielsen rating yesterday for Novak Djokovic's four-set win over Rafael Nadal in the U.S. Open men's final from 4:00-8:45pm ET, marking the fourth consecutive year the men's final has aired on a Monday. The rating is up 18.2% from a 2.2 overnight for the same matchup in last year's final, which did not see the telecast spill over into primetime (4:00-6:05pm). This year's final is down slightly from '09, when Juan Martin del Potro's defeat of Roger Federer also went into primetime. CBS averaged a 2.0 overnight for all of its U.S. Open telecasts this year, up from a 1.8 rating last year (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).

WE NOW RETURN TO OUT REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING: In Virginia, Bob Molinaro reports WTKR-CBS opted to air "local news programming" instead of the start of the match, moving that to a sister station. WTKR President & GM Jeff Hoffman said that the move was made because it "'just seemed like a cleaner thing to do' in case a rain delay pushed play into CBS' regular evening programming hours." However, "backlash from viewers" forced WTKR around 6:20pm to pick up the match "at the start of the third set" (Hampton Roads DAILY PRESS, 9/13). Meanwhile, Tulane Law School professor Gabe Feldman wrote on his Twitter feed, “Dear Cox Cable and CBS, I promise to watch ‘A Family Raises 5 Monkeys’ on Inside Edition later if you let me watch the US Open now...” (TWITTER.com, 9/12).