Ratings: ‘Survivor: Blood vs. Water’ finale down; ‘Family Guy’ rises after Brian hype

The Sunday night rating woes continued for most of the major networks. For whatever reason, it continues to seem as though the likes of “Once Upon a Time,” “Revenge,” and even “Survivor” cannot withstand whatever has happened to network TV on Sunday nights.

When it comes to the Jeff Probst-hosted reality competition, the finale of “Survivor: Blood vs. Water” drew a 2.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and also over 10 million viewers. From one standpoint, that is a great figure for a network that typically struggles with “The Good Wife” and “Revenge,” but it is down a good six tenths from where the show was with “Survivor: Philippines” at this point last year. The show really deserves even better ratings for last night, given just how great this season was.

Meanwhile, “Once Upon a Time” languished with a 1.9 rating for its own strong fall finale, and “Revenge” barely mustered a 1.5. This is probably why the show is moving to 10:00 p.m. after a few episodes in January and “Resurrection” is getting a shot come March in its former timeslot.

But the real winner of the night, at least for the time being, seems to actually be “Family Guy.” Buoyed largely by rumors that Brian was going to be coming back to the show (which turned out to be true), the Seth MacFarlane creation saw its own 18-49 rating rise to a 3.0, a boost of 0.3 from the last new episode. Given that this was more than an hour after football finished, we’re not going to sit here and say that the NFL is the major reason for the jump. There were definitely some other factors at play here.

Tonight, the ratings battle is going to be with the likes of “The Voice” and “How I Met Your Mother” airing their winter finales. So even though we’re near the start of the holiday season, the new programming is not over just yet.