Saturday Final Nationals: TBS Wins Prime Time with Cubs-Dodgers NLCS

TBS was tops on this Saturday night, as it snapped ABC’s six-week Saturday prime time winning streak, courtesy of Game 1 of the “National League Championship Series” between the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The game averaged 6.4 million viewers across television and live streaming, an increase of 56 percent over last year’s ALCS Game 1 (Toronto-Cleveland) coverage airing on TBS network and an 8 percent rise over 2016 NLCS Game 1 (Cubs-Dodgers on FS1 and other Fox platforms).

The telecast peaked with an average of 7.5 million viewers from 9:45-10 p.m. ET.

TBS’s 2017 NLCS Game 1 coverage garnered 62 percent growth among adults 18-49 and increases of 59 percent in men 18-34 and 55 percent in adults 25-54.

Locally, Saturday’s NLCS Game 1 generated an 18.1 household rating in Chicago and an 11.0 in Los Angeles, a 29 percent increase in the Los Angeles market over last year’s NLCS Game 1 featuring the same teams.

(Source: Turner Sports)

In late night, NBC’s Oct. 14 telecast of “Saturday Night Live” hosted by Kumail Nanjiani and featuring musical guest P!nk averaged a 2.01 rating in adults 18-49 and 7.001 million viewers overall. It is the show’s best Week 3 rating in adults 18-49 in four years and second-biggest Week 3 overall viewership in nine years, trailing over that span only last year’s election-fueled result, according to official-national “live plus same day” figures from Nielsen Media Research.
 
The 18-49 rating is also a season high for “Saturday Night Live.”
 
The 2.01 rating is the highest for the third “SNL” original telecast of a season since Oct. 12, 2013, when an episode with host Bruce Willis and musical guest Katy Perry scored a 2.09.
 
The Oct. 14 edition, which aired live coast to coast (11:30 p.m. ET, 8:30 p.m. PT) and counted viewers from 11:30 encores in western markets, generated the show’s second-biggest overall audience for Week 3 since Sept. 27, 2008, when the episode hosted by Anna Faris and featuring musical guest Duffy, averaged 7.854 million.
 
Over that nine-year span, the only bigger result for a Week 3 “SNL” came with last year’s edition, hosted by Emily Blunt and featuring musical guest Bruno Mars (7.016 million viewers on Oct. 15, 2016).

(Source: NBC)

Cable Rankings – Saturday 10/14/17
What follows are the top 100 most-watched shows in prime time on cable (by order of network) for Saturday, October 14:

For the entire week of October 9-15, 2017 in Total Day (8 p.m. to 5:59 a.m.), Adult Swim is down 3 percent in viewership (0.776 million vs. 0.801 million) and down 5 percent among Adults 18-49 (499,000 vs. 525,000) from one week earlier; the network is also down 17 percent in viewership (0.776 million vs. 0.930 million) and down 10 percent among Adults 18-49 (499,000 vs. 555,000) from the same week one year ago (October 10-16, 2016). (https://programmingins.wpengine.com/?p=20022)

TOONAMI – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2017

	PROGRAM	Viewers (000)	A1849 rating	A1849 (000)
11:00	Dragon Ball Super (r)	933	0.46	588
11:30	Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters	842	0.40	513
12:00a	Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders	638	0.31	400
12:30a	Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphana	545	0.26	331
1:00a	Hunter X Hunter	527	0.25	325
1:30a	Lupin the 3rd: Part 4	440	0.21	270
2:00a	Naruto: Shippuden	438	0.22	278
2:30a	Outlaw Star	390	0.19	244
3:00a	Cowboy Bebop (r)	342	0.17	222
3:30a	Attack on Titan (r)	314	0.15	192

Source: Live+Same Day data, Nielsen Media Research