30.3 MILLION TUNE IN ON A SATURDAY NIGHT

Television executives have all but written off Saturday in their program planning, so small are the audiences for shows on that night. But others have pointed out that Saturday once attracted some of television’s biggest audiences, and indeed NBC’s telecast of Saturday’s New York Jets/Indianapolis Colts contest, won by a Jets’ field goal as time expired, averaged 28.8 million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with 30.3 million, seeming to bolster the hypothesis that if television execs gave viewers something that they want to watch on Saturday night, they will come. Even so, those figures were overshadowed by those for Fox’s overrun of the Green Bay Packers/Philadelphia Eagles game on Sunday, which attracted 35.96 million viewers in the 7:00-7:30 p.m. half hour, with 29.74 million watching the last minutes of the game and Fox’s post-game show, The O.T., in the 7:30-8:00 p.m. half-hour. The huge lead-in gave The Simpsons a win at 8:00 with 12.65 million viewers and also helped the series debut of Bob’s Burgers, which debuted with 9.41 million. (It was beaten out, however, by the last half hour of CBS’s CSI: Miami (12.31 million) and ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (9.62 million). Meanwhile, NBC’s The Cape enjoyed a strong preview/premiere at 10:00 p.m., winning the time period in both total adults and adults 18-49 as 8.28 million tuned in.