ESPN hit a ratings home run in primetime last week, bolstered by its Major League Baseball postseason coverage.
The sports network averaged 3.2 million viewers in primetime during the week of October 3 to October 9, topping all cable networks, according to Nielsen. ESPN was led by the nearly 3 million viewers on average that watched its coverage of baseball’s Wild Card playoff round.
ESPN2 also benefited from telecasting several of baseball’s opening-round postseason games, finishing fourth for the week with an average of 815,000 viewers.
Cable-news networks rounded out the top three most watched networks for the week, with Fox News Channel finishing second with 2.2 million viewers, followed by MSNBC’s 1.2 million watchers. HGTV pulled into fifth place with 787,000.
Hallmark Channel was sixth with 777,000 viewers, followed by TLC (704,000 viewers), INSP (640,000), Discovery Channel (637,000) and CNN (631,000).
Fox News was dominant on the total-day charts, averaging 1.4 million viewers to top all cable networks for the 40th straight week, followed by ESPN (1 million viewers), MSNBC (746,000 viewers), CNN (530,000) and Hallmark Channel (449,000), Nielsen reported. ■
