NIELSEN RATINGS ARE BACK

Nielsen finally released its ratings for the week of Oct. 6-12 late Thursday afternoon, more than two days after its usual weekly ratings release. At the same time it posted a notice to the press that it had removed "all historical broadcast data" from its website as a result of the "technical error" that it disclosed last Friday, which, it said, had affected the past seven months’ ratings results. It indicated that it would begin reissuing corrected reports, proceeding in reverse order from the week of Sept. 22, "at a regular cadence." The Oct. 6-12 broadcast list contained no surprises. NBC’s Sunday Night Football, as usual, came in at the top with the New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles game attracting 18.1 million viewers, followed by CBS’s NCIS with 17.3 million (if cable viewing had been included, it would have tied with AMC’s The Walking Dead) and CBS’s Thursday Night Football (Indianapolis Colts vs. Houston Texans) with 15.9 million. Nielsen did not release ratings for the nightly newscasts. Last week, it reported that ABC World News Tonight with David Muir had overtaken NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, but on Friday, it conceded that its data were faulty and that in fact the NBC news program remained the ratings leader. For the week overall, CBS remained ahead in total viewers with an average household rating of 6.5 and an 11 share. NBC followed with a 5.1/9. ABC was in third place with a 4.5/8, while Fox continued to remain far behind with a 3.3/6.