Ratings: Football rules, ‘Once Upon A Time’ and ‘Revenge’ suffer, ‘Mentalist’ and ‘Good Wife’ stable

Credit: NBC

Football put NBC ahead on Sunday night, with the game between the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears averaging a 7.0 rating in adults ages 18-49, and an expected viewership of roughly 21 million viewers. Football also helped Fox earn significant gains thanks to the St. Louis Rams vs. San Francisco 49ers game extending into overtime. However, this had the detrimental effect of cutting into the Animation Domination lineup, resulting in lower-than-expected numbers for The Simpsons, and the 200th episode of Family Guy.

ABC also took a hit due to football, with its Sunday night dramas providing little competition to the pigskin games over on rival networks, although this was largely the case for scripted dramas across the board. Once Upon a Time and Revenge hit season-low numbers.

CBS, at least, was able to stem some of the damage by nearly matching their non-football averages, with The Good Wife and The Mentalist holding steady with their numbers from a week ago.

All-in-all, NBC won the night in total viewers with 15 million, followed by Fox’s 11.2 million, and CBS and ABC, with 9.9 million and 6.6 million, respectively.

For a detailed breakdown of last night’s numbers, check out the full story at Variety.