If no match for last year’s Chiefs, TNF strong again in Week 6

The following article " If no match for last year’s Chiefs, TNF strong again in Week 6 " originally appeared on Sports Media Watch .

Thursday Night Football viewership slipped on a competitive night, though that was to be expected given last year’s game featured the Chiefs.

The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (49ers-Seahawks) averaged 13.18 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, down 5% from Broncos-Chiefs last year (13.83M) but up 50% from Commanders-Bears in 2022 (8.79M).

San Francisco’s win, which peaked with 14.68 million viewers in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, was the fifth-straight edition of TNF to average at least 12 million viewers — the series’ longest such stretch since moving to Prime Video three years ago.

TNF is now averaging 13.98 million viewers this season, up 3% from the same point last year (13.60M) and the series’ highest five-week average since 2014 on CBS and NFL Network (17.64M). (Keep in mind during its broadcast network era, TNF typically kicked off its season with a couple of games exclusively on NFL Network.)

As goes without saying, TNF dominated a competitive night of sports that included the MLB Postseason and WNBA Finals.

TNF continues to average a younger median age — 47.5 — than the linear NFL broadcasters (54.8), if one slightly older than a year ago (47). Adults under 50 account for nearly 50 percent of the TNF audience (48%), compared to little more than a third (35%) for the linear broadcasters. Adults under 35 account for 22%, compared to 14% for the other broadcasters. (It should be noted that those comparisons exclude the exclusive Peacock game in Week 1.)

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