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MNF Scores Best-Ever Night for ESPN

Week one of Monday Night Football scored tremendous ratings for ESPN. Week two’s game brought ESPN its best-ever ratings in its 27-year history.

Monday night’s game, between Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the now 2-0 Jacksonville Jaguars averaged a 9.4 overnight Nielsen cable rating and drew 9.81 million households, writes Media Life.

The Steelers-Jacksonville game showed an 8 percent lift over last week’s game between the Redskins and the Minnesota Vikings. It was also up 24 percent over the second week’s game on Sunday Night Football last year, which aired on ESPN (Monday Night Football aired on ABC).

Many media watchers believed that the MNF switch from a major network to cable would lose viewers, but between ESPN’s self-promotion of the switch, and extensive media coverage given to Tony Kornheiser‘s addition to the broadcasting booth, MNF hasn’t dipped as much as some people expected, according to the article.

MNF on ESPN may have a negative effect on CBS, whose adults in the 18-49 demo dipped slightly from last year on opening night. Fox’s Prison Break, the least-female-skewing show on broadcast on Mondays, may also be effected, but it could be weeks before the full effect is known.