CBS Tops NFL Week 5 With Packers-Rams As Most Games See Year-Over-Year Audience Declines

CBS came out on top in Week 5 of the NFL regular season, with 20.27M viewers tuning in during Sunday’s national window, which broadcast Packers-Rams in a majority of markets.

This is the second consecutive week that CBS has led the pack, but they still won’t be touting the win, since Paramount and Nielsen are still entangled in a contract dispute that has left the current contract expired. That means Paramount properties aren’t technically using Nielsen data to measure any of their content.

Also, despite the win, that’s still down 12% from last year, when CBS had the Chiefs taking on the Vikings in the majority of markets. And that wasn’t even the most-watched game that week last year, which indicates a pretty sleepy week for pro football, relatively speaking.

CBS’ earlier doubleheader tallied 14.34M viewers, up 14% from last year, showcasing the Houston Texans win over the Buffalo Bills.

The Dallas Cowboys bested the Pittsburgh Steelers after a weather delay on NBC‘s Sunday Night Football, raking in 20.3M viewers. That was a 23% audience decline over last year, when NBC won Week 5 with more than 24M viewers for the same exact matchup. That game was NBC’s most-watched SNF matchup ever. It makes sense that the audience would suffer, given the game went well past midnight ET.

ESPN managed 15.91M viewers for Monday Night Football‘s broadcast of the Saints-Chiefs matchup. Once again, down from last year’s more than 17M who tuned in for the Packers-Raiders, though that game was also simulcast on ABC. When taking that into consideration, this is a fairly strong cable-only audience.

Meanwhile, Fox averaged just over 14M viewers for the Sunday afternoon singleheader, down 15% from last year.