The numbers are in for the 2024 debut of Thursday Night Football. The audience was strong despite a stinker of a game, with an average audience of 14.96 million.
The Bills-Dolphins number was slightly down from last year’s Week 2 TNF game between the Vikings and Eagles, which averaged 15.05 million.
There’s no shame in that. Last night’s game wasn’t very competitive.
The Bills-Dolphins game peaked at 18.09 million between 9:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET, an all-time high for TNF on Amazon Prime. That’s when the game was still in doubt.
The audience for the Week 2 contest beat last year’s overall TNF average by 26 percent.
The strong numbers should continue next week, when Aaron Rodgers and the Jets host the Patriots, who will at least be 1-1 and could be 2-0. The Jets could be 0-2 — and thus would be very desperate for a win.
While traditional network broadcasts still outperform streaming, streaming is catching up. Slowly but surely.
The gap will continue to narrow as the audience that grew up on traditional TV continues to yield to generations of folks who have always known streaming.
The great unknown continues to be whether the streaming ceiling will ever match the ceiling for old-school TV.
