Monday 12/19/11 – Monday Night Football Wins Again

With only one regular season telecast remaining, ESPN's Monday Night Football (6.12 A18-49 Live Rating) coverage, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers, fueled the network to average the largest A18-49 audience Monday night, improving 76% from a week ago (San Diego Chargers vs. Jacksonville Jaguars) and 5% from last year (Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota Vikings).

Although returning to a full night of repeats, including How I Met Your Mother (2.02), 2 Broke Girls (2.33), Two and a Half Men (2.18), Mike & Molly (2.10) and Hawaii Five-0 (1.76), CBS landed in second place among A18-49 viewers, ahead of all other broadcasters.

Ranking third in the demo, NBC rolled out its latest game show, Who’s Still Standing? (1.45) at 8pm, which dropped 47% across A18-49 from last week's Fear Factor premiere. Settling into its regular timeslot, week two of Fear Factor (2.20) at 9pm was unable to combat its weaker lead-in, declining 29% from last week’s 9pm episode. Despite the erosion experienced earlier in the night, Rock Center with Brian Williams (1.12) at 10pm improved 7% among A18-49 from its previous airing.

FOX's two-hour season finale of Terra Nova (1.54) pushed the network to third place among A18-49 broadcast viewers, with last night's closer reporting a 37% smaller audience than the program's series debut on 9/26/11, after holding relatively steady from last week's one-hour telecast.

Declining slightly from a week ago with A18-49, Univision's lineup of Familia Con Suerte (1.53), Fuerza del Destino (1.95) and Don Francisco Presenta (0.87) still placed the network ahead of ABC and The CW.

For the fourth consecutive week, ABC filled the 8pm time slot with holiday specials, including Kung Fu Panda (1.19) and A Chipmunk Christmas (1.20), which helped the network's 9pm episode of You Deserve It (0.87) hold steady week-to-week with A18-49 viewers. The network rounded out the night with an encore of Castle (0.79) at 10pm.

Remaining last among the broadcast networks, The CW ran back-to-back repeats of Hart of Dixie at 8pm (0.34) and 9pm (0.30).

Source: Nielsen, based on Live data.