Sunday Night Football Dominates Amazing Race Premiere in Ratings

The National Football League (NFL) game between the Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals garnered an 8.2 rating on Sunday night during the 8:00pm ET hour to lead all programs. The CBS reality series Amazing Race, which features poker pros Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho, premiered at 7.1.

Amazing Race began around 8:15pm ET as a result of a late finish of a football game that aired on CBS. During the 8:00pm ET hour, Sunday Night Football generated an 8.2 rating according to HitFix, Amazing Race came in at 7.1, ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition mustered a 6.4 rating, and Fox’s The Simpsons came in at 4.5. Another show that aired during the first of two hours for Amazing Race was The Cleveland Show (5.3 rating), which premiered on Sunday night at 8:30pm ET on Fox.

Amazing Race’s 15th season premiere featured a two-hour episode, seeing a 5.8 rating during its second hour, a sharp drop-off. Sunday Night Football, which was approaching halftime at 9:00pm ET, attracted a solid 9.7 rating during its second of three hours. Fox again ran two half-hour programs, with Family Guy grabbing a 5.7 rating and American Dad chiming in with a 4.1. Meanwhile, Desperate Housewives returned to score an 8.4 rating. The hour-long program airs on ABC and bumped Amazing Race to third in the ratings during the time slot.

The number of viewers of Sunday Night Football dwindled during the 10:00pm ET hour, when the game became a blowout, generating an 8.7 rating. Indianapolis won 31-10, with quarterback Peyton Manning tossing four touchdowns in primetime; the Colts led 21-3 at the intermission. The game generated additional interest given that Arizona is the defending National Football Conference (NFC) champions and narrowly defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in January’s Super Bowl.

HitFix noted that NBC averaged 12.7 million viewers during the three-hour time period and mustered an 8.0 rating. CBS, which carries Amazing Race, was in second place with a 7.3 rating and 11.7 million viewers. Amazing Race is regularly one hour in length, but aired for 120 minutes over the weekend for its debut episode. Next week, Pittsburgh will host the San Diego Chargers on Sunday Night Football, which will surely lead to another ratings-rich affair for NBC.

Previously, ESPN held the rights to Sunday Night Football before the honor went to NBC in time for the 2006 season. The NBC version originally featured Al Michaels and John Madden in the broadcast booth. Madden retired before the start of the 2009 campaign and was replaced by Cris Collinsworth. Amazing Race has aired on Sunday nights since Season 10 in the 8:00pm ET hour. Previous versions have aired on Thursday night, Wednesday night, and Tuesday night. The latter has been the traditional evening for new episodes of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) on ESPN.

Amazing Race once again won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program in 2009. In fact, Amazing Race has won the honor every year the award has been given out and, this time around, it bested American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Project Runway, and Top Chef. Amazing Race features Executive Producers Bertram van Munster, Jonathan Littman, and Jerry Bruckheimer, who has been behind movie blockbusters like Top Gun, The Rock, and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Michelle and Ho were nearly sent home from Tokyo on the season premiere of Amazing Race, but finished last in a non-elimination leg. Despite having to complete a Speed Bump, an extra task only they had to perform, Michelle and Ho rallied to finish seventh out of 11 teams. Now, 10 remain as the cast heads to Cambodia. Check out Amazing Race at 8:00pm ET on CBS every Sunday.

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