Three of California’s four NFL teams were on TV in Southern California on Sunday, and the Chargers came away with by far the highest Nielsen rating in San Diego.
True, the Chargers-Bills game was the only one airing without NFL competition, but the 14.5 rating here for their 10 a.m. contest was 24 percent higher than the combined rating for the afternoon games involving the Raiders and Rams.
The Raiders-Broncos game, which started just before 1:30 p.m., had a 7.9 rating in San Diego, slightly more than double the 3.8 rating for the Rams-Cardinals game, which began just after 1.
The story was different in Los Angeles, where the highest rating of the three games belonged to the one team that no longer calls the city home. The Raiders-Broncos clash had an 8.4 rating in L.A., suring a 7.9 for Chargers-Bills and 5.6 for Rams-Cardinals.
In San Diego, the Chargers’ rating was 24 percent higher than the 11.7 rating for the L.A. club’s season opener the previous week. That game, against the Chiefs, faced competition from another game on another network, a situation that also will be in play this Sunday when the Chargers-Rams game airs on CBS at the same time as the Cowboys-Seahawks game on Fox.
Sunday’s number also was in line with last season, when Chargers games in San Diego averaged a 14.2 rating. From 2004-16, the average season rating for local Chargers telecasts ranged between 24.4 (2016) and 31.6 (2010).
Each rating point in San Diego, the nation’s 29th largest TV market, is equivalent to an estimated 10,028 homes, according to Nielsen. In Los Angeles, the No. 2 market, each point is equivalent to 53,186 homes.
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