Natalie Ceretti (Milwaukee Millers), WFL Sunday Night Football (NBC-TV) (Channel 4)
Network Season Rankings
1. ICE - 8 wins (37 points)
2. ROD - 2 wins (18 points)
3. NBC - 2 wins (17 points)
ICE PULLS IN A SURPRISING VICTORY OVER NBC THANKS TO A NEW RECORD SET BY THE WFL TO START THE EVENING
ICE new CEO Paige Van Buren is off to a great start this season as she closes her first full week of the season getting ICE up to 8 wins and 37 points as they're leading ROD and NBC by 20 points right now.
Sunday's victory was a bit of a surprise as ICE was expected to finish in 2nd place behind NBC but thanks to an overtime finish for the ages in the WFL featuring the debut of the Herbert Twins in the Dallas Cowgirls versus Toronto Icegals game. As Dallas Cowgirls QB Elle Alexandra was driving her team down the field looking to score a touchdown in overtime she made a crucial mistake throwing it to Ivy Herbert who leaped up to grab the interception and with no one in front of her it was all green grass as she returned that interception all the way down the field for over 100 yards to win the game at the buzzer. The game itself ended around 7:50pm so it was a late ender as Ivy Herbert was celebrated by the Toronto crowd for their home opener at the Rogers Centre bringing the Icegals record to 2-0 this season and Elle Alexandra goes down 0-2 to start career down in Big D unfortunately. Both teams are extremely popular probably the two biggest fanbases in the league lead to a record setting ratings performance for the game.
Just last week Dallas contributed to a new NITRO ratings record of 181.02 million viewers for the Monday Night Football season premiere on the ICE Television Network this past week which featured the return of Elle Alexandra to Montreal who she started her WFL career with back in the league's initial season way back in 2010. That game also had an overtime finish at the buzzer in one of the ultimate revenge games.
This Dallas-Toronto matchup got a new record 191.56 million viewers in that 7pm hour for ICE so that's 10 million more viewers than what we got from last week's game and we are now only under 9 million viewers to 200 million viewers which is likely to be eclipsed sometime soon this season.
This allowed ICE to have a huge start as the NGIT Pageant auditions rebounded this week after losing to Sunday Night Football last week got the win this week going all the way up back to 158 million viewers which gave enough support for the restructured ROD drama pilot Self-Defense which had a solid start at 116 million viewers at about 73% retention rate which is around what Who Wanted Nichole Dead? has been getting this season behind the pageant on Friday nights at midnight. Self-Defense's ratings will be interesting as it moves to Thursdays this week and will have a weak lead-in going against the two pageant behemoths and NBC's much and improved adult comedy lineup led by the new comedy hit Rachel.
This was a great victory for ICE as everything finished well over 100 million viewers which was not expected coming into the night so they stole a crucial victory away from NBC.
NATALIE CERETTI & THE MILWAUKEE MILLERS DEFENSE IN BEAST MODE ON NBC
NBC for the second night in a row did gain another 2 points on ROD as they now just trail ROD by one point but with ROD debuting their biggest heavy hitters of the season in Dallas Cowgirls Undercover and the network premiere of Monday Night Football it looks like ROD will get some room away from NBC tomorrow night so NBC not winning the night will keep them in 3rd place for at least a couple of more nights.
Sunday Night Football delivered the goods again as this week's matchup wasn't high-profile as the season premiere was between the Icegals and Norwood Octans but it was definitely a game that people wanting to see since it featured Bridget Satterlee and her ferocious defense accompanied by Natalie Ceretti and Nancy Nery on that Milwaukee Millers defense which is slowly turning into one of the best defenses in the league only giving up a total of 20 points in those two games as they stopped last week's star Amy Aasen for the Minnesota Viqueens in their home opener as Milwaukee picks up another huge win on the road in the division after beating Chicago last week now going to Minneapolis to beat the Viqueens 20-10 to start the season 2-0 as they look to be the Detroit Fury's main opposition in that division. Bridget Satterlee was the top defensive player this week in the WFL.
SNF grabbed 141.26 million viewers so huge ratings for this divisional matchup for NBC which led into The Waves sneak peek preview featuring the official acting debut of Madison Beer in a drama series at The Waves posted 95 million viewers. Now the bad news is that the rating was only at 67% retention which puts it below 70% but it could've bled even worse so this is promising depending on how it does on Wednesday. NBC should be pleased with the result despite the retention being under 70% for the new drama.
Speaking of dramas ROD was the only network that didn't have the support of a 100 million viewing lead-in so their dramas had to help themselves and if you ask me all of their dramas scored solid efforts this week as oddly enough the ratings were the same as last week for Eight Is Enough and Baywatch so not drop here is a real positive but the main story here remains Pretty Thieves which has been ROD's top scripted breakout hit through this point as Pretty Thieves leads all of the Janit O'Day shows through the first week of the season in the ratings at 90 million viewers this week which was a season-high.
In late night both ROD and ICE ran with WFL Late Night Football this week as we start with the Tokyo Suns and BC Grizzlies game which was a huge game at home for the Grizzlies in Vancouver their home opener because it featured Dasha Dereviankina who need to start performing better athletically here in her young NITRO career after a horrid week on both Team ICE and in the WFL last week. Dasha Dereviankina looks like she's back as she had a monster game at safety for the defense getting 12 tackles and a interception return for a touchdown as BC hammered the Suns 36-8 to go 2-0 so they're in a good battle with Toronto and Quebec in that division and Norwood plays tomorrow afternoon in daytime on ICE. The other late night game featured the Sydney Kangaroos traveling to Oakland to take on Natasha Herbst and the Bay Area Quakes. Natasha Herbst had a pretty good game but the rest of the team didn't as Vikky Lee was the star in this one for Sydney and 2010 draft pick Jillian Guill ran for over 150 yards on the ground getting 3 touchdowns in this game. Sydney goes to 1-1 on the season and Bay Area at 0-2 unfortunately for them.
Tomorrow night we'll finally have the second biggest scripted premiere of the fall in Dallas Cowgirls Undercover starring Shenae Grimes premiering right before the network premiere of Monday Night Football on ROD. Over on ICE they'll trout out Truck Ladies' second episode against DCU and The Carpenters Hour finally returns after a 12-day break and will make its Monday night debut and capping the night is the season premiere of Overnight Nurses. In daytime we have a big soap premiere in Staying Alive starring Strawberry Shields at 3pm. Going to be a huge day in the ratings on Monday we'll see how this all breaks out for the premieres.
