SUNDAY FOOTBALL IS BACK WITH A WIN FOR HALL OF FAME GAME

The return of NBC’s Sunday Night Football in the form of the NFL Hall of Fame preseason game between the Miami Dolphins and the Dallas Cowboys attracted 8.89 million viewers, peaking in the first half-hour of the telecast with 10.35 million but dropping to 7.32 million in the final half-hour. Despite being blacked out in several cities because of its dispute with Time Warner Cable, CBS managed to hold its own on Sunday, dominating the first hour of primetime with its stalwart 60 Minutes, which averaged 8.12 million viewers. The rest of its schedule was down a tad from last week — but football coverage was probably more responsible for that than the blackouts. Nevertheless, UBS analyst John Janides said in a note to clients on Sunday that CBS could drop $400,000 per day in lost retransmission fees and advertising as a result of the fracas with TWC. Janides, however, was optimistic that the dispute would last no more than two weeks “if history is a guide.”