Green Bay Packers-Chicago Bears game help NBC dominate Christmas day television schedule

While ABC may have dominated Christmas during the day with its line-up of NBA basketball games, NBC dominated the prime time schedule with Sunday Night Football, which say the Green Bay Packers get a win over the Chicago Bears.

NBC won the night easily with an average of 17.8 million viewers and a 5.5 18-49 rating, according to Zap2It. The night started with Football Night In America, which grabbed 9.05 million viewers, but fell behind NBA coverage in the ratings with a 2.5 18-49 rating. The game itself had a 6.8 18-49 rating, with its best hour coming at 9 p.m., when it logged 21.8 million viewers, only dipping slightly to 20.7 million at 10 p.m.

CBS came in second in audience numbers with an average of just 5.4 million viewers, but finished third in the ratings with a tiny 0.8 18-40 rating. The network’s only new program was 60 Minutes, which drew 6.4 million viewers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. After that was a full line-up of repeats, starting with CSI, which had 5.2 million viewers, while The Good Wife had 4.2 million. CSI: Miami ended the night with 5.7 million viewers.

ABC came in third with 4.8 million viewers, but second in the ratings with a 1.7 18-49 rating. The network won the 7 p.m. hour thanks to their continuing coverage of the Chicago Bulls-Los Angeles Lakers NBA game, which drew a huge 8.5 million viewers and a 3.3 18-49 rating. From then on, though it was a big drop-off. The 1966 version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas drew just 3.7 million viewers, while the 2000 film version of the story had 3.15 million in its first hour. The number climbed a bit to 3.7 million in the second hour, though.

Finally, Fox came in at the bottom, thanks to no new shows or NFL overrun. The network averaged just 1.8 million viewers and a 0.7 18-49 rating. Bob’s Burgers and The Cleveland Show both had less than 1.5 million viewers, while 2 million tuned in to The Simpsons and another episode of The Cleveland Show. Family Guy had just 2.3 million viewers, while American Dad had 2.2 million.