Baseball may be America’s pastime, but I had to explore the abandoned wasteland of my cable package to find the NLCS on channel 739 last week. By contrast, NBC’s Sunday Night Football was broadcast television’s top rated program for the 2013/2014 TV season. That popularity hasn’t lessened this season and in addition to the NFL’s success on Sunday nights, CBS’ Thursday Night Football has also scored big in the ratings, though I think we can all agree that that victory has an asterisk attached to it since Thursday Night Football has been spared the grim task of facing off against Community.

Unfortunately for Sunday Night Football, however, they have not been spared a weekly tussle with AMC’s The Walking Dead over these last two weeks. And while that competition didn’t dim NBC’s broadcast victory or even its total viewership crown this week, there is one major demographic that is a bit “torn between two lovers” over the whole situation.

Last week, a blowout game on SNF helped put Walking Dead in the top spot demo-wise on both broadcast and cable. Week-to-week, Walking Dead was down 12% in total viewers from October 12, which was what the series did in Week 2 of its fourth season last October 20. Written by Kirkman, last night’s “Strangers’ episode got a 7.7 rating in the key demo. That’s an 11% drop from last week’s premiere but still better than SNF’s 7.0 fast nationals rating and everything else on both broadcast and cable last night. If it holds, that’s two in a row for Walking Dead, though the SNF demo result could change when final numbers come in. Last week, SNF went from a 6.6 to its eventual 7.0.

It’s worth noting that last night’s Broncos/49ers game was also a blowout, but viewers did have a chance to see Quarterback Peyton Manning snatch the all-time touchdown pass record from former NFL great and dungaree model Brett Favre, so Sunday Night Football had that going for it. That apparently wasn’t enough to woo the majority of 18-49 year olds to the game, though.

How is The Walking Dead besting football? For one thing, no one throws a flag to gum-up the works every time the zombie action starts to get good. The Walking Dead is also a cultural juggernaut and showrunner Scott Gimple has steered it toward what is, quite possibly, its finest season debut in terms of quality and buzzy iconic moments. This victory feels earned, I just wonder if it will continue for as long as these programs have to co-exist on the schedule.

Source: Deadline