ESPN gets highest rating ever for 'MNF'
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ESPN's first regular-season Monday night NFL game under the new contract drew the cable network's biggest audience ever.
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Saturday night's Game 1 World Series telecast returned a 13.7 national rating (25 share), the highest number for a Game 1 since the 1999 opener of the Yankees-Braves Series delivered a 14.2 (26 share) on NBC. It was the highest-rated World Series Game 1 for Fox since it began broadcasting baseball in 1996 (NBC retained the Series in 1997 and ...
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(InfoWorld) - On Feb. 5, at about 7 a.m. local time, I'll be watching the Super Bowl. For those of us living in foreign lands where football means a round ball, the NFL doesn't get primetime coverage. Despite growing up as an NFL fan, when I say "football" now to anyone except my mother, I'm talking about soccer. When I watch football on any given weekend, it's the glorious exploits of my beloved Arsenal Football Club I'm enjoying, not those of the New York Giants. During almost 11 years in China, I have slowly seen those vestiges of the U.S. unavailable here in Beijing disappear. The Internet changed the way we live overseas. Letters became e-mails. Amazon.com became the Berlin Airlift to the book-deprived, with CDs and DVDs following soon after. But regular National Football League coverage was one of just two remaining treats that eluded me. That changed on Sept. 13, 2006. On that day, I discovered Ben & Jerry's ice cream at my supermarket, for about $9 per pint. That morning, I watched an NFL game, live via the Internet, in my home. NFL Enterprises embraced the Internet for the 2006-07 season. Previously the NFL did not allow webcasting of its games, except for text and graphic-based commentary such as GameCast. But this year, international fans could buy a GamePass from YahooÂ to view games live and streamed, at either $249.99 for the season, or $24.99 per week. Apple's iTunes Music Store sold season passes for fans to watch their favorite teams, uploading each game after its completion. I took a different route. I downloaded TVUplayer , which seems to be a mass re-broadcast from a Slingbox MediaÂ device in San Jose, California. There was the NFL, complete with American sportscasters and commercials ("This is our country..."). I ignored that it was 8:30 a.m. and made popcorn. I don't understand how TVUplayer is legal, but if they ever become a paid service, they can have my money. ESPN and ABC disappeared midway through the season, so I lost the Sunday and Monday night games that I used to watch on Monday and Tuesday mornings, respectively, but Sunday night remained sleepless as I watched the day games. If living overseas teaches us anything, it's that in the Internet world, content distribution and licensing methods are grossly obsolete. I would have paid to watch the NFL live years ago -- but they wouldn't take my money. Cinema and DVD release dates seem equally ludicrous when you live in a market where they're meaningless. Piracy makes a lot more sense when you realize that the guy down the street can offer you "Casino Royale" on DVD today, but Hollywood thinks you should wait eight months. Next season promises to be even better for football fans here. On Aug. 8 -- exactly one year prior to the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing -- China will host to its first-ever NFL exhibition game, with the New England Patriots playing the Seattle Seahawks. But when the regular season begins about three weeks later, it will be first down and 10 on the Internet.
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Very preliminary findings from 49 of the nation's biggest markets showed that ratings for this year's Super Bowl, with the New York Giants' thrilling win over the New England Patriots, were up 6 percent over last year's big game, according to Nielsen Media Research on Monday.
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ESPN, which managed to offend the NFL with an edgy football drama, is back in the game with a project set in the world of high-stakes poker.
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A record 97.5 million Americans tuned  in to Sunday's upset victory by the New York Giants over the  New England Patriots, marking the biggest TV audience in Super  Bowl history and the second most-watched U.S. telecast ever.
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The NFC Championship Game,  which aired Sunday on Fox, was the most-watched non-Super Bowl  program on TV since the "Seinfeld" finale in 1998.
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NEW YORK  - The NFC Championship Game, which aired Sunday on Fox, was the most-watched non-Super Bowl program on TV since the "Seinfeld" finale in 1998.
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NEW YORK - ESPN's Monday night NFL game was watched by more viewers than any show in cable TV history except a 1993 debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot.
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Football season started early as Mark Wahlberg's "Invincible," a Walt Disney tale about a real-life walk-on who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1970s, debuted as the top weekend movie with $17 million.
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American football's Super Bowl draws the third-highest audience in US television history on Sunday.
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The calendar still said Monday, and Hank Williams Jr. still kicked things off by wondering if you were ready. That &#151; and the game itself, of course &#151; was about all that was familiar for the first telecast of "Monday Night Football" on ESPN, the cable network where the NFL moved its weeknight prime-time game after 3 1/2 decades on ABC.
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By Michael Hiestand  Tonight, ESPN has an opportunity: show that TV sports can deal with real-life epics.  ESPN lavishes Super Bowl-like pregame shows on all its Monday night NFL games this season.
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"Tilt," the new ESPN drama offering a behind-the-scenes look at the world of poker, debuted higher than the sports cable network's average in the time slot but rated lower than the 2003 debut of its football series "Playmakers."
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Shaq vs. Kobe drew the highest rating in six years for a regular-season NBA game.
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The New York Yankees' come-from-behind 6-5 victory over the Boston Red Sox attracted the most households ever to watch a Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN.
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David Beckham&#39;s much-hyped  debut with the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team drew an average  of 1.5 million viewers to ESPN, the largest audience for an  ESPN telecast involving a Major League Soccer team, according  to data issued Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.