Top Cable Sports Originals for Thursday, September 7, 2023

Day 1 of Pat McAfee show averaged 228,000 viewers and a 0.10 adults 18-49 rating. That’s down 31% from the Noon-2P ET SportsCenters airing a year ago and down around 15% with adults 18-49. By comparison Get Up was down 21% and First Take was down 15% compared to the same day last year.

These numbers don’t include any ESPN+ or YouTube viewing or the ~15 million Spectrum homes without ESPN due to the Disney/Charter dispute and I can’t imagine ESPN hoped to change the behavior of those already watching/listening to McAfee’s show via YouTube or podcast.

Update: on NBC, the Lions/Chiefs NFL Kickoff game averaged 24.75m linear viewers. NBC runs different ads on Peacock and NBC Digital than it does on television, so Nielsen doesn’t currently include the Peacock viewing but per NBC, including Peacock/NBC Digital would’ve boosted the total viewership to 26.8 million viewers on an average minute basis.

Nielsen data ranked/sorted by adults 18-49 rating: