They were baking up a storm of cakes on ABC on the new season debut on The Great American Baking Show (0.8/3) and the most watched show of the night was a rising The Big Bang Theory (2.8/11) with its 14.25 million viewers but the real heat was over on as the Atlanta Falcons pulled off a 20-17 win over the New Orleans Saints.

Honestly, with injuries all over the place and Saints head couch Sean Payton flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct near the end, there was nothing pretty about the match-up on NBC and NFL Network. Later Saints QB Drew Brees became the latest NFL player to slam the Thursday night game as unsafe and unnecessary.

With a 10.2/18 result in metered market ratings, last night’s TNF certainly didn’t gain any traction for the concept. Down 5% from last week’s terrible Dallas Cowboys demolition of the Washington Redskins in the early numbers, the Falcons victory last night also declined 12% from the comparable game of December 8 last year.

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Last week’s TNF went on to snare a season high viewership of 15.6 million on NBC and NFL Network with a 4.7/17 rating among adults 18-49. Giving some POV to the ratings challenges that the league and the broadcasters are facing this protest filled season, the TNF of December 8, 2016 ended up with a 5.6/20 rating and an audience of 17.39 million.

Currently last night’s game has a 2.9/11 in the key demo and 10.49 million viewers. Those fast affiliates will of course change in the final numbers and NBC will win the night but it won’t be any 2016, if you know what I mean? As it is right now, the Comcast-owned net has a 2.7/10 rating and 10.01 million viewers – not that far ahead of CBS’ 9.07 million sets of eyeballs.

As for that Season 3 premiere bake off on ABC, things were down 20% in the demo from the Season 2 opener of December 1, 2016. Like last night on the Disney-owned net, with Shrek The Halls and Toy Story That Time Forgot, last year’s Great American Baking Show was preceded by a holiday special – in that case, a pretty solid A Charlie Brown Christmas.

As the Baking Show made it’s latest return, Seth MacFarlane’s renewed The Orville (0.9/4) concluded its first season on Fox with the same result as its November 30 airing as did Gotham (0.8/3).

On the CW Supernatural and Arrow were mixed bags. The former was the same as its fast affiliates of last week while the latter took a 55% drop from its ‘Crisis On Earth-X’ crossover episode of November 27.

A full night of Big Bang Theory, Young Shelton (2.2/8), Mom (1.4/5), Life In Pieces (1.1/4) and S.W.A.T. (0.9/4) flew the CBS flag on Thursday. The science geek sitcom was up 12% from last week’s low. That helped pushed up its prequel spinoff a tenth, the same metric by which S.W.A.T. went down. As for Mom and LiP, they were the same as their November 30 shows.

And on that note, you may want to note that TNF peaked last night with an 11.4/21 in metered market ratings right at its 11-11:30 PM ET.