Presented here are the 10 highest-rated sports broadcasts on network and on cable television during the fourth quarter of 2003. Programs are ranked by their national rating. Specific NFL games listed among the national programs were the featured games during late-game coverage on the particular days. Certain parts of the country could have received other games that were of local-market interest.
Notable among the results:
FOX SCORES BIG: Coverage of MLB's postseason helped Fox secure seven of the fourth quarter's 10 highest-rated sports programs. The two MLB League Championship Series Game 7 broadcasts scored highest. Last year, no LCS telecast cracked the quarter's top 10, though neither series featured a Game 7.
ESPN SWEEP: ESPN swept the quarter's top 10 cable telecasts with Sunday night football broadcasts. Dallas-New England on Nov. 16 pulled a 9.6/15 cable rating, up 10.3 percent from 2002's top-rated fourth-quarter cable telecast, another Sunday night NFL matchup, Minnesota-Green Bay (8.7/13). The only two Sunday ESPN games of the quarter that missed the top 10 were the Oct. 5 Cleveland-Pittsburgh game (6.0/9) and the Dec. 14 N.Y. Giants-New Orleans game (5.5/8), though visibility of the second game certainly increased after-the-fact with coverage of Joe Horn's infamous in-game cell phone antics. The top-rated non-football-related telecast of the quarter was MLB's National League Division Series Game 3 between Atlanta and Chicago, which posted a 6.7 coverage-area rating.
