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NFL football ratings down on weekend of boycott

Posted at 4:31 PM, Oct 03, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-03 16:31:01-04

NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Football League is continuing a steady decline in audience. The fourth week of games had the smallest audience of the year on a weekend that some conservatives had called for a boycott because some players used the national anthem to protest against police treatment of minorities.

The Nielsen company said Tuesday that last weekend's nationally televised games averaged 14.2 million viewers, down from 14.8 million viewers the week before.

Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity was among the people calling for the boycott. It's virtually impossible to tell what kind of impact it had, considering that viewership had been going down before that.

Meanwhile, CBS was the top-rated network for the first week of the fall season for the ninth year in a row.