Eagles game crushes TV competition

Monday night, Michael Vick and Robert Griffin III beat up Ryan Seacrest, a bunch of sharks, two tennis pros, an American Ninja Warrior, Two and a Half Men, Mistresses, and 2 Broke Girls.

It was a TV ratings massacre, as the Philadelphia Eagles, led by Vick, and the Washington Redskins, led by RG3, lured far more viewers nationally than ABC, CBS, the CW, Fox or NBC.

Take Seacrest and the premiere of NBC's Million-Second Quiz. It topped the ratings for those five networks for the 8 p.m. hour, reaching about 6.5 million viewers, edging out ABC's Shark Tank, according to zap2it.com.

The Eagles-Redskins game was caught by about 17 million viewers, making it the highest rated season opener for the eight years Monday Night Football has been on ESPN, according to Variety.

In the Philadelphia and Washington markets, the game was even more dominant.

Per Variety.com: "In Philadelphia, last night's game delivered an 11.0 rating on ESPN and a 24.1 rating on ABC station WPVI, for a combined 35.1 rating in the market. And in D.C., the game earned a 22.3 rating on ESPN and a 16.5 rating on independent station WDCA, for a combined 38.8 rating in the market."

Even higher rated nationally, though, was the late Sunday afternoon matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers on Fox. About 28.5 million people watched, the biggest season-opening audience ever for Fox, which began carrying NFL games 19 years ago.

The last program with bigger ratings was February's Academy Awards on ABC.

Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com.