On what was billed as the biggest regular-season
NFL game of all time,
NBC's
Sunday Night Football played up
Tom Brady's dramatic return to Foxborough to face his former team, the
New England Patriots, and coach of 20 years,
Bill Belichick. Numbers show a 62% boost in viewership for "The Return" on
SNF, making the broadcast the second biggest of the year behind only the Super Bowl, and the second biggest Sunday Night Football game ever.
Promoted all week, NBC positioned its cut of a mini Brady/Patriots/Belichick soap opera—soundtracked by
Adele's "Hello"—at the introduction to the main event. On Monday morning, Adele
updated her website and socials accordingly and "Hello" moved into the
iTunes Top 30.
The major NFL/NBC Adele look throughout the week, along with
Taylor Swift's moving up the release of
Red (Taylor's Version) by a week, to 11/12, has the biz and fans chattering that a superstar release on 11/19 is more than mere speculation.
NBC's Sunday halftime show also featured a clip of
Dr. Dre and
Snoop Dogg talking about their just-announced
Super Bowl Halftime Show, which will also welcome
Eminem,
Mary J. Blige and
Kendrick Lamar, injecting the ol' National Broadcasting Corporation with the cool only these icons can provide.
Sports fans have more drama lined up this week with one-game playoffs on Tuesday and Wednesday for
Yankees/
Red Sox and
Dodgers/
Cardinals.
TBS should get solid ratings for both nights as two of the storied franchises will be sent home for the winter.
Over in the U.K., the
BBC is tracking potential Adele action: “The number "30" was projected onto several buildings around the world over the weekend. Fans are predicting this will be the name of her fourth album—after
19,
21 and
25. The mysterious projections have been spotted on the
Eiffel Tower in Paris, the
Colosseum in Rome, Berlin's
Brandenburg Gate, Amsterdam's
Nemo Museum and New York's
Empire State Building. The logo has also reportedly appeared in Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Malaysia, South Korea and the UK.”
Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to attempt to analyze Adele's new color scheme.
